Copenhagen, a city for humans and rain
City is an enormous organism, where every human acts like a node in network. A trivial role from a first glance, but vital from grand perspective. Every interaction between citizens defines the shape of society, because it rumbles incomprehensibly far. For a city to be successful from personal perspective, an involving environment has to be provided, where encounters and experiences taking place would positively effect the whole network. How does such a city look like?
Unlike huge American highway-megalopolis, or gray and dehumanized block house neighborhoods in post-soviet towns, Copenhagen is outstandingly human wherever you go. City is designed for people, not for cars or industrial production. Here Jane Jacob’s “sidewalk ballet” idea is fully fulfilled: it doesn’t matter how far you need to walk, your route will always provide you with sense of closeness and being a part of community with its narrow sidewalks, big, but not overcrowded concentration of friendly people, and most importantly — outstandingly cozy architecture. Danes even have a special word for coziness and comfortable conviviality: “hygge”, what proves how cautious they are about their social relationships and their living environments.
The most inhuman logic of city planning goes according to R. Moses rules, who argues that city has to obey the automobile. This idea is deeply rooted in dreams of industrial utopia, where huge factories demand its employees to come to work by car due large distance. This kind of approach produces cities with huge roads, without any empathy towards sentient human being. But emphasis on industrial production is the thing of past, of modernist times, now the most progressive cities rely more and more on service or creative industries, what needs no huge factories built far from living quarters. Everything now has to be in proximity, thus walking and bicycling becomes the most logical means of transportation. And of latter fact Copenhagen is also outstandingly conscious — it’s worldwide famous as the town most suitable for riding a bicycle, despite the fact of how often does it rain there.
The ever shapeshifing Edward is fond of being a raincloud from time to time, thus he descends down the narrow and cozy streets of Copenhagen as an eerie swarm of raindrops. The rebellious spirit of this mysterious character draws him to Chritiania, a freetown where no rules apply, and Maali decides to manifest on the wall to show off her spinning talent, which is borderline legal in Estonia due to spontaneous tornadoes it induces.
Being a cloud of possibilities, like an abstract compilation of quantum particles, Edward sometimes tends to manifest in multiple shapes at once. He felt the cozy human vibe of Copenhagen. He noticed a single spot filled with potential to become a huge time portal, and once the moment was right, the rain formed a shape of hand, and the wind appeared in the shape of shadow.
Three guys and a proud woman. Two musicians and two wise-man on the rock. A supervisor and a crew. The power of brotherhood against an ever so influential feminine energy. The story has no correct way of reading, a spectator here is the one who finishes the piece in his own mind. Think up what’s the situation here, think up the names of these characters, come up with the background of why the woman is on a rock, and what kind of songs do these two bagpipers are playing. Everything is in your hands, you’re the one who finishes the story.
The shadow figure finishes his act and rises in to the sky as a form of fog, getting back in to the shape of possibility cloud, leaving the spectator with all the tools needed for making up their own story. Copenhagen is made for people, not for inanimate cars or factories, and the art of Edward is a complementary addition to the coziness and communicative nature of the town. It’s a script for interaction, where a reader should potentially stop for a second, and share his imaginative insights with a friend. Nothing else, but such random interactions between human beings makes the city alive, forms the identity and shapes a bright future. Nothing else but the speaking is what makes humans human.
