A Famous Urbanist...

Hi All!

A long time ago I decided to be an engineer. I applied to five different schools, got in, and went off to engineering school. My favorite class was actually an elective, and we read an excerpt on space and people and the urban form. It took that much to inspire me to drop out and pursue studying city
scapes.

Today I found that text, in the office of Gehl Architects. It was actually Gehl's book, Cities for People, that had so drastically shifted the course of my life. To find myself in this place, with a group of friends who were just as interested as I was in the lecture was so affirming. For so long I was afraid I had made the ‘wrong’ choice. Today I realized I’m exactly where I need to be.  

Gehl Architects focuses on public space planning. Their big interest is how the built environment impacts people and affects how they behave. With this in mind, Gehl Architects strive to create spaces that enable people to live well. It might seem obvious, but at their conception this was a really novel idea. 

Jan Gehl was actually a classically trained architect. His wife, psychologist Ingrid Mundt, asked him why architects were only interested in buildings, and not in people. This question prodded Gehl into looking at how people use space. In traditional design, architects will add in buildings, then design for traffic, and finally think about how people will fit in the space. Gehl Architects pioneered a new model, first imagining how the life happens between people, looking at the space where it happens, and then finally adding in the buildings. When Gehl Architects was first coming together, he was reacting to Modernism (think Brasilia) and trying to discover what makes a city good for people (hint: not just what’s good for cars). 

One of their guiding principles is connecting mobility and public space. This is a great way to get public space utilized, because people will constantly be moving through it and checking it out. Gehl Architects love to have six story apartment buildings with shops on the lowest floor. Classic mixed use design! I’ve been experiencing it all over the city here in Copenhagen and it is lovely! 

Another part of what makes the city so great is all the space reclaimed from cars. While in America this still freaks people out, here it’s become a beloved part of life. The shop owners were originally terrified that their businesses would lose all their customers if the streets were turned into pedestrian boulevards. Yet, these old cars streets are ALWAYS packed with people. People eating at cafes, people chatting, people picking up groceries, people just enjoying the pulse of the city. Business space on these pedestrian streets is always booming and people are out in all kinds of weather. 

And they have the data to prove this. It’s mostly become accepted that these types of places are beloved. Yet to be able to show the before and after is extremely important in telling the story. Really, as urban planners our most important job is communicating the vision of how our cities could be. Copenhagen continues to create more public spaces outside, and it’s one of the main reasons why the city feels so calm and livable. To be able to use these earlier projects as proof of how it works is vastly important in the political realm. They help us as designers tell the story of how we could create our public spaces. Because that’s what roads are. The vast majority of our public spaces (our lecturer said something like 80%) is actually not for people at all, but instead for cars. All over Copenhagen there are examples of spaces getting reclaimed from the car realm for people, one great example was a huge road that got turned into a beautiful park (side note, there are SO MANY parks here). 

Gehl Architects love the bicycle and how it makes spaces so much more accessible to get to, and is such an efficient use of space (bikes are so much smaller than cars, you can park 30 of them in the same space it takes to park one car). They say it’s important to make the barrier to start cycling low. It’s not a political statement to be on a bicycle, it’s just a method of transportation. We’re not cyclists, just people who bike. This is so important for a city making, to move easily where we want to go is imperative for our quality of life.

Another important design feature is the amount of vegetation this city has. This is actually something that Copenhagen has been pursuing, and they have grants to green building courtyards. Their goal is that people won’t have to travel out of the city to find peace and greenery. It’s so nice to be in a really dense area and have green all around, it feels so much more relaxing. A few decades ago, people kept moving out of Copenhagen. They decided to try to create attractions and amenities for families to stay in the city, such as playgrounds. This has been widely successful and the city is very family friendly. That’s the thing, if you design really comfortable spaces for people who need more amenities, everyone will get to benefit from that space. 

Last night was actually Midsommers. We went to a massive food cart pod on the harbor front. It felt like a festival, and there were literally thousands of people there. It seemed like everyone showed up by bike, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that many bike commuters. My friends and I wandered around and saw them burning the first pyre. Everyone started singing some Danish song, it was all very hygge. As I was leaving, I found an outdoor bouldering wall! This was such a creative and exemplary way that the Danes play with public space. I miss you all, my lovely friends and family! I hope summer is treating you well and I’m so excited to come back and play before the year starts up.