In this reflection, you’ll hear from a Fellow on lessons learned from the Urban Design Study Trip to Copenhagen.
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As someone who cycles daily, I appreciate how conducive the urban design and planning of Copenhagen is to pedestrian and bike mobility. On our fourth day of the study trip, I had the very Danish experience of biking 11 km (about 6.3 miles) in the rain from Karens Minde Kulturhus to the non-profit housing estate Tingbjerg. Despite being my first time in Copenhagen, and with a constantly bewildered GPS, I arrived around the same time as the rest of the group, who took a chartered bus.
The impression that I got so far from the study trip was that Denmark has made itself into a highly connected place through thoughtful processes of architectural and city design that, while quite top-down, networked people and made the urban space accessible and efficient. I also learned, in depth, about how the social welfare system is deeply ingrained in the logic of planning and administration in both the city and the country of Denmark.
Tingbjerg, which we discussed at the Kulturhaus before going there, to me, represented some of the current challenges that Denmark faces in terms of how the welfare society of a highly homogeneous country may need to adapt in the face of demographic change that is essential to the country’s future. Tingbjerg is a post-war development that was conceived, in large part, by the architect and planner Steen Elider Rasmussen, who brought the development to life around the same time the Danish welfare state, and all that came from that, was being established.
The housing project (which, unlike in the US, doesn’t have negative implications) was initially built to provide housing for former slum dwellers and to create a place of well-being that was also bounded by the societal norms of Danish society However, the Tingbjerg of today is comprised mainly of immigrants and descendants of immigrants, who have expressed more involvement in the current redevelopment that is taking place, in contrast to the hierarchical backbone that undergirds both planning and the welfare system, which are intertwined . The physical changes that I observed since the 50s and 60s were quite impressive, and I will be paying more attention to how Denmark deals with the social transformations that they will need to make to accommodate the needs of a rapidly changing population and society.