How we can live as humans?
Jan Gehl — THE HUMAN METROPOLIS
oriented toward human needs. Over the past few decades,
he has transformed Copenhagen into a model example of a city geared towards tangible
human needs, which has since been copied all over the world.
Written by Harald Willenbrock
When cities today create new cycle paths, establish pedestrian zones or ban cars from the centre, we owe our thanks to Jan Gehl. The Danish architect is seen as one of the most influential urban planners of our time. Cities of several million people such as Singapore, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Melbourne as well as London and New York have all come to him with the same question: how can our city’s quality of life be appreciably improved? Ultimately, his vision is very simple: let people have their towns and cities back!
Harald Willenbrock
Mr. Gehl, mayors and urban planners from around the world ask for your help as they seek solutions for improving quality of life. But it seems only very few can define what that really means?
Jan Gehl
There is one quite reliable indicator for the quality of life in a city: look around and see how many children and old people are out and about in its streets and squares.
Could you please elaborate?
The way I see it, a city is worth living in if it respects human scale. That means it runs at the pace of pedestrians and cyclists, not cars; that its streets and squares are of a manageable scale so that people can come together in them. That epitomises the basic concept of a city.
But why children and the elderly, in particular?
I was recently in Hanoi where I met a Vietnamese woman who had just returned from Denmark: “Has there been a baby boom in Denmark?” she asked.
“Copenhagen is full of parents with pushchairs and five-year-olds on bicycles!” As it happens, there has not been a baby boom in Denmark — quite the opposite, actually. But as Copenhagen is so safe, we can let our children play on the streets. The same applies for the elderly — and as you know, their numbers keep rising. In Hanoi, the roads are quite simply too dangerous for them.
What do architects and urban planners need to do in order to get the population back out on the streets?
That is easy to answer. They should plan their housing and cities for the people.
Is this not already the case?
No. Most new buildings and neighbourhoods don’t take the human scale into account. You can see this in their overinflated dimensions: buildings, streets and squares are getting bigger and bigger, while we — the people who use, appreciate and should feel comfortable in them — are as small as we ever were. This has resulted in cities which constantly seem to be whispering: “Go home my friend, as quickly as possible, and shut the door behind you!” This has damaging consequences.
What are these consequences?
Urban planning over the last half a century has cost thousands of lives, because it was centred on vehicle traffic and left people in a sort of permanent stupor. Today, more than a third of the U. S. population are overweight; inactivity is responsible for more deaths than tobacco. Conversely, the costs of healthcare are at their lowest in cities where the population is active. Walking 10,000 steps a day or engaging in some other form of exercise can help you live an extra seven years, on average.
Why do you think that cities were built with so little thought to their populations?
City planning in the last half-century has been dominated by two powerful paradigms: modernist architecture with freestanding high-rise blocks and soulless green areas, with long routes from A to B and vehicle traffic. In the past, cities developed more slowly, gradually growing over the centuries. Everybody got around on foot at the same 3mph pace, journeys were manageable, the streets narrow and varied. This all dramatically changed with the economic boom. Cars started taking over our streets, the average pace of our cities reached 40 mph. Urban planning became traffic planning and there was no thought given to the consequences. Now we know: cars and skyscrapers are the best way of sucking the life out of a city.
City life has remained popular, so do planners have any choice but to build densely and high? For example, high-rise buildings are sprouting up all over the city in London, which has a population of eight million.
Did you know that parts of Barcelona have a higher population density than the skyscraper metropolis that is Manhattan? Paris and Venice are also incredibly densely populated, yet wonderful cities worth living in. Why is this? Because these cities’ architects have come up with a more intelligent way of dealing with population density than building storey upon storey upon storey. High-rise is the lazy architect’s answer to tackling the issue of population density.
What is wrong with a well-designed and built high-rise building?
Among other issues, it interferes with the human navigation system. This is constructed horizontally; that is simply part of our nature. In the first four to five storeys of a high-rise building, we still feel like we are part of the city. Any higher and we begin to feel like we’ve grown wings. Also, tall buildings often damage the urban landscape because of their downdraughts and reflective surfaces.
Nowadays, many cities try to promote themselves with spectacular works of architecture by urban planners such as Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry or Norman Foster. You describe such landmarks as “bird shit architecture”. Why?
Because these “starchitects” plan from high above and drop buildings everywhere in cities that resemble precisely that — shit. While many urban planners believe that architecture is all about the form (Gehl gets out his imaginary violin), it is in fact the interaction between this form and life — the things which go on between the tower blocks — which is most important (Gehl starts playing his imaginary violin). Admittedly, life between the towers is far more complicated than just creating a magnificent example of architecture. This is of course why such attempts are rarely made.
You are incredibly scathing of architects considering you are one yourself …
I will admit that I was fascinated by the grandeur of huge structures as a young graduate in architecture. One of my heroes was Oscar Niemeyer, just because of his spectacular designs for Brazil’s new capital city Brasilia. But then I was asked an important question by a psychologist, who would later become my wife: what does your architecture mean to the people who are going to have to live in and around it?
And what was your answer?
