Car parks from space: what satellite images can tell you about four Harare centres

Every landlord wants to know how busy their centre is against the one down the road, every retailer wants to know before signing a lease, and every lender wants to know before extending one. Footfall counters, till data and phone-location data answer the question, but they belong to someone else, cost money or do not exist in Harare.

Satellites pass over every centre in the city every few days, and the European Union's Copernicus programme gives their images away. So we asked a simple question: can free satellite images of car parks show which centres are busiest, and how that changes?

We tested it on the four centres in our study of who lives within reach of them, Sam Levy's Village, Arundel Village, Honeydew and Kamfinsa, with Westgate, Greendale Shopping Centre and Highland Park as benchmarks, using every clear image since 2017 from two satellites.

The answer is more useful than a simple yes or no. Some things the images show clearly and reliably; one thing many people hope they show, they cannot. Below is what we found, centre by centre, and where the line falls.