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Pedestrian Cities
Encourage walking and cycling. Discourage cars and parking.
By Paul Makovsky
August/September 2002
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CITY CENTER
By 1996, Copenhagen had six times the amount of car-free space than it
had when pedestrian initiatives began in 1962.
Criswell Lappin
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Copenhagen is one of the world's great pedestrian cities. Although it's blessed
with certain inherited characteristics--such as a narrow medieval street
grid--the city has worked steadily to improve the quality of its street life.
In the 40 years since Copenhagen's main street was turned into a pedestrian
thoroughfare, city planners have taken numerous small steps to transform the
city from a car-oriented place to a people-friendly one. "In Copenhagen,
we have pioneered a method of systematically studying and recording people in
the city," says Jan Gehl, a Danish architect and coauthor of Public
Spaces--Public Life, a study on what makes the city's urban spaces work.
"After twenty years of research, we've been able to prove that these steps
have created four times more public life." Here is Copenhagen's program
for a more pedestrian-friendly city.
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CITY CENTER
Pedestrians use the public space along the canal for eating, strolling,
and taking in the sunshine.
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STRØGET
In 1962 Copenhagen's old main street became its first car-free street.
It's now the central artery of the city's pedestrian street system.
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RÅDHASPLADSEN
The central traffic artery (above left) was removed from Town Hall Square
(above right) in 1996 and given back to pedestrians.
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CITY BIKE
The City Bike system, introduced in 1995, allows anyone to borrow a bike
from stands around the city for small coin deposit.
Photos: Top, Günter Lenz/NordicPhotos.com; second from top, Bob Krist for
the Danish National Tourist Office; second from bottom left, City
Engineer/Public Spaces-Public Life; others, Jan Gehl and Lars
Gemzøe/Public Spaces-Public Life
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COPENHAGEN'S 10-STEP PROGRAM
1. Convert streets into pedestrian thoroughfares.
The city turned its traditional main street, Strøget, into a pedestrian
thoroughfare in 1962. In succeeding decades they gradually added more pedestrian-only
streets, linking them to pedestrian-priority streets, where walkers and
cyclists have right-of-way but cars are allowed at low speeds.
2. Reduce traffic and parking gradually.
To keep traffic volume stable, the city reduced the number of cars in the
city center by eliminating parking spaces at a rate of 2-3 percent per year.
Between 1986 and 1996 the city eliminated about 600 spaces.
3. Turn parking lots into public squares.
The act of creating pedestrian streets freed up parking lots, enabling the
city to transform them into public squares.
4. Keep scale dense and low.
Low-slung, densely spaced buildings allow breezes to pass over them, making
the city center milder and less windy than the rest of Copenhagen.
5. Honor the human scale.
The city's modest scale and street grid make walking a pleasant experience;
its historic buildings, with their stoops, awnings, and doorways, provide
people with impromptu places to stand and sit.
6. Populate the core.
More than 6,800 residents now live in the city center. They've eliminated
their dependence on cars, and at night their lighted windows give visiting
pedestrians a feeling of safety.
7. Encourage student living.
Students who commute to school on bicycles don't add to traffic congestion;
on the contrary, their active presence, day and night, animates the city.
8. Adapt the cityscape to changing seasons.
Outdoor cafés, public squares, and street performers attract thousands
in the summer; skating rinks, heated benches, and gaslit heaters on street
corners make winters in the city center enjoyable.
9. Promote cycling as a major mode of transportation.
The city established new bike lanes and extended existing ones. They placed
bike crossings--using space freed up by the elimination of parking--near
intersections. Currently 34 percent of Copenhageners who work in the city
bicycle to their jobs.
10. Make bicycles available.
People can borrow city bikes for about $2.50; when finished, they simply
leave them at any one of the 110 bike stands located around the city center
and their money is refunded.
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