The Global Heatmap and Strava Metro are community-powered features that Strava makes available to the Strava community and to public agencies to understand how people move.
Specifically, the Global Heatmap shows where users have been active over the last year as "heat" on a map (updated monthly). Meanwhile, Strava Metro partners with transportation and city planning departments to plan, measure, and improve infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians. You can visit metro.strava.com to learn more.
We use aggregated, de-identified activity data to power the Global Heatmap and Strava Metro. We do not show "heat" in an area until multiple users have uploaded activities traversing that area in the last year. We also exclude activities not set to "Everyone," portions of activities hidden by map visibility settings like hide start/end location, and activities uploaded by users who have requested that their data not be included.