Measuring what really matters in downtowns.
Perception, Experience, and Belonging.
If you work in a downtown district, you already have a good sense of how your events are doing on paper. You can see how many people came, you can read the foot traffic patterns, and you can pull the spending data. All of it is useful, but it never quite tells you everything you want to know about how people actually felt while they were there. This piece is about what downtowns are learning when they begin to measure for that other layer.
Impact stops being "how many" and starts becoming "how it felt."
Attendance and spending tell you whether an event happened. Perception, experience, and belonging tell you whether it mattered. The districts making this shift are not throwing out traditional metrics, they are adding the layer underneath them.
Events are doing more than the attendance number suggests.
Attending even one event can change how a person feels about the place that hosted it. That is not a marketing claim, it is what the data is starting to show when downtowns ask the right questions.
People who attended at least one event were twice as likely to say they felt a sense of belonging downtown.
The lift held across event types, not only headline festivals or large gatherings.
Suggesting that programming is not only activation, it is relationship building.
Attendance numbers are only part of the picture.
Across downtowns, there is a growing interest in understanding what sits beyond attendance counts and economic indicators. Most teams already have a strong handle on things like foot traffic and dwell time. The bigger challenge is understanding how people felt during their visit, whether their perception of the downtown shifted, and whether their connection to the place grew in any way.
That gap, between the numbers we already collect and the experience those numbers are meant to stand in for, is what has been pushing more downtown teams to look further. It is not because traditional metrics are wrong. It is because they describe the crowd without describing what the crowd was actually experiencing.
The shift is subtle, but it quietly changes how impact is defined. Instead of focusing only on how many people came, the focus begins to move toward what those people experienced while they were there, and what they carried with them afterward.
What this piece covers
Why perception is a metric
What districts are trying to see when attendance numbers stop being enough.
The three pillars
Perception, experience, and belonging, and how each shows up in real behavior.
Events as belonging infrastructure
Why a single event can do more for connection than months of ambient programming.
The part that is harder than collection
What teams are doing with responses after the survey closes.
Practical ways to start
Short surveys, lines as captive audiences, the questions worth repeating every year.
Belonging does not sit inside a single number.
When we talk about belonging, we are not pointing at a single score or a tidy metric. It is something that shows up in everyday moments and small interactions, easy to overlook but deeply felt. It might be whether someone felt comfortable spending time downtown, whether they felt safe, whether they saw people like themselves around them, or simply whether the downtown felt like a place where they belonged.
It also shows up in what people choose to do next. Whether they stay longer than they had planned, whether they come back the following weekend, and whether they tell someone else to come along. These signals can seem small on their own, but read together over time, they give a much clearer picture of how people are experiencing a place than any single attendance figure can.
The belonging survey framework that has emerged from these conversations captures these moments through a small, deliberate set of questions. It asks visitors how they would rate their experience, whether they felt welcome, whether they felt a sense of belonging, and how likely they are to return or recommend the area to someone else. These are straightforward questions on the surface, but what they make possible is a far richer understanding of impact than attendance numbers can offer on their own.
Three things downtowns are learning to measure alongside attendance.
Perception, experience, and belonging are not the same thing. They answer different questions, they take different inputs, and they move on different timelines.
Perception: how the downtown lives in people's heads
Perception is the story people already tell themselves about the district before they arrive, and the story they carry away. It changes slowly, and it does not always match the statistics on the dashboard.
- Annual perception surveys work best here, not point-of-event ones.
- Repeat the same few questions year over year so the trendline is readable.
- Watch for the gap between what visitors think and what residents think.
Experience: what actually happened to them here
Experience is immediate. It is what happened in the hour they spent downtown, whether they could find their way around, whether they felt safe, and whether the thing they came for actually delivered.
- Best captured through QR codes at events, while people are still on site.
- Kept short, with three or four questions before drop-off sets in.
- Asked in line rather than at the exit, since people in line have the time.
Belonging: whether they felt this was a place for them
Belonging is the quietest of the three and arguably the most important. It is whether someone felt at home in the space, whether they saw people like themselves there, and whether they want to come back.
- Ask whether they felt welcome, not only whether they had fun.
- Track likelihood to return and likelihood to recommend separately.
- Pay attention to who is not answering, just as much as who is.
Most teams are still figuring this out, and that is the right place to be.
Most districts are still in the early stages of working through this, and that is completely okay. Some teams are just beginning to explore how to measure these kinds of outcomes, while others are experimenting with different tools and approaches. Only a small number have a more established framework in place right now, which shows that this is still an evolving space for everyone.
In many ways, this makes it easier to start. There is no expectation of getting everything right immediately. Teams are learning as they go, sharing what works at conferences and in roundtables, and gradually building an approach that fits their own community. If you are not sure where to begin, you are in the same place as most of your peers, which is both a comforting reality and a useful one.
What events actually do: They build the relationship, not just the attendance number.
Events have mostly been measured as throughput. How many came, how long they stayed, and how much they spent in the surrounding blocks. Those numbers are real, and they are not the whole return.
What is becoming visible in the data is that events do relationship work. They give a person a reason to be downtown on a specific day, with a specific purpose, in the company of other people. That combination is what produces the jump in belonging, and it is also why a single event can sometimes matter more than six months of ambient programming.
What to watch for:
- Lift in "felt a sense of belonging" between attendees and non-attendees
- Differences by event type, not only by event size
- Return visits in the ninety days after the event
- Who is not showing up, and what that absence is telling you
What surveys actually do: They are a listening mechanism, not a reporting one.
Surveys tend to get framed as data collection, and that framing is part of why so many of them underdeliver. The value of a survey is not the spreadsheet at the end. It is the fact that a visitor was asked, and the fact that an operator had to read what came back.
There is a quiet side effect worth naming. When people are asked for their input, they become more aware of their own experience, and when they later see feedback reflected in a small change, it reinforces the idea that their voice matters. Over time, that builds a different kind of trust. People begin to feel that the downtown is not just a space they visit, but a place where their opinions are taken seriously.
What to set up:
- A short, repeatable question set that lives across events and years
- A clear next home for responses, so they do not die in a spreadsheet
- A small standing meeting where recent responses are read together
- A feedback loop visible to the people who answered, even if it is small
The real work is after the survey closes.
Most districts we work with, the ones who have been at this a little longer, confirm the same thing. Collecting the responses is the easier part. Turning them into a practical insight that someone can act on is where the real effort sits, and it is the part most teams underestimate when they begin.
It gets harder when you are also trying to fold in informal feedback: the conversations staff had during the event, the thing an ambassador overheard at the gate, the complaint that came in by email on Monday morning. Structured and unstructured inputs do not merge themselves. The teams that do this well tend to give one person explicit ownership of the synthesis step, and they treat it as real time on the calendar rather than something that will somehow happen in the margins.
None of the teams doing this well are running elaborate instruments.
There is no single approach that works for everyone, and most teams are combining a few different methods depending on their capacity and goals. Some are using short surveys at events through QR codes, while others are focusing on in-person conversations and observations. Many are also running a larger perception survey once a year to get the broader view.
A few practical ideas have proven helpful across districts. Asking people questions while they are waiting in line often leads to better participation, because they have the time and they are already engaged with the event. Keeping surveys short helps reduce drop-off, and repeating a few key questions over time makes it easier to track changes in how visitors experience the downtown. Starting small and building gradually seems to be the most common, and most effective, way to begin.
A note on tools and approaches.
Many districts are using familiar tools like SurveyMonkey or similar platforms, which make it easier to design surveys and track responses over time. Some are also incorporating a simple recommend-to-a-friend question, since it gives a useful sense of how people are likely to act based on their experience, not only how they felt in the moment.
There is also a quietly growing interest in using newer tools to help with analysis, particularly when it comes to making sense of large volumes of open-ended feedback. This area is still evolving, and no one is suggesting it replaces the judgment of the person doing the synthesis. What it can do is reduce the time required to read, group, and interpret qualitative responses, which has often been the bottleneck that pushed teams to shorten or skip the qualitative side of the survey altogether.
Turn perception into something your team can actually act on.
We help downtown teams set up the right four questions, capture them cleanly across events, and run the synthesis that turns responses into change.
Want to explore this further?
We recently held a roundtable on this topic where districts shared what they are trying, what is working, and what still feels challenging. The conversation was honest and practical, including the parts where teams were open about what they had not yet figured out.
You can take a look at the video here, and if measurement is on your plate this year, it is well worth an hour of your time.
You are part of a larger shift, not a solo project.
Many teams are asking similar questions and working through similar challenges, which makes this a shared learning process rather than something you have to figure out alone. The most useful place to start is often a few clear questions, careful attention to what people are saying, and small, thoughtful changes informed by what you hear.
Who, specifically, is going to read these responses, and when is that time on the calendar?
What are we planning to do differently based on what we hear, and who has the authority to make that change?
What are the two or three questions we are willing to ask every year, without rewording, so we can see real movement?
Frequently asked questions
Start with one of the three pillars in this piece, whichever fits your team's capacity best: a short annual perception survey, a lightweight in-event experience question, or a simple sense-of-belonging question. You do not need all three on day one, pick the one you can repeat consistently.
Short enough that someone waiting in line can finish it. Three or four questions is usually the practical limit before drop-off sets in, so spend that budget on the questions that matter most.
Familiar tools like SurveyMonkey are a fine place to start. The platform matters less than having a clear next home for the responses and one person with explicit ownership of reading and acting on them.
Track who is not answering as closely as who is, and compare results across event types and locations rather than leaning on a single aggregate number.
Repeat a short, consistent question set every year instead of rewording it. The value comes from the trendline over time, not any single measurement.
Thinking about measuring impact in your district?
District360 supports the data foundation that makes it possible to track perception, experience, and belonging alongside your traditional metrics.
