Bristol Case Study — UK city-centre footfall growth

Case Study · Real Estate. Fetch Analytics' Terain platform tracked movement across 10 major UK cities for Avison Young's urban footfall report — and Bristol stood out, outperforming the UK city average more than two-fold using footfall data and location analytics.

The brief — evidence to read the city

The aim was to give cities, property owners and stakeholders real-time intelligence to interpret shifting behaviours across busy urban centres, so investment, strategy and placemaking could be grounded in evidence rather than assumptions.

• Recovery signals were hard to read without a consistent, near-real-time measure of city-centre footfall.
• Investment and placemaking risked relying on assumptions rather than evidence.

The approach — ten cities, one measure

Terain tracked movement across Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London's West End, Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol on a consistent footfall measure, comparing H1 2025 against H1 2024 and benchmarking each city against the UK average.

The results — one of the UK's strongest performers

Bristol recorded a 4.5% rise in city-centre footfall between January and August 2025, versus a UK city average of 1.9% — 2.4 times the average — across 10 major UK cities tracked in the report.

The outcome — a blueprint for place-led growth

The data signalled where recovery is taking hold, helped stakeholders support retail clusters, improve access and target investment, and provided a foundation for regeneration and long-term urban strategy.

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