Why Copenhagen is such an incredible city

Everyone knows that Copenhagen is the happiest city in the world. But not as many people appreciate just how unique and interesting it is. As a regular visitor, below I've listed out my top reasons why Copenhagen is the world's coolest city. 

Vibrant Neighbourhoods

Nørrebro

Norrebo is one of Copenhagen's trendiest districts: people look amazing, bars and cafes line the streets, and its energetic vibe lasts late into each night.

But this neighbourhood's vibrancy isn't simply a coincidence - Norrebro is the city's most multicultural area. With 26% of its inhabitants from outside of Denmark, it offers an incredible cultural mix of food, music, language and fashion-styles.

Islands Brygge

In contrast to the eclectic urban vibe of Norrebo, Islands Brygge is predominantly residential. But what makes this one of my favourite parts of the city, is its harbourside location and incredible stretches of open space.

Differently to most cities around the world, Copenhagen's government is liberal enough to let people swim in its harbour, and there's probably no better place to do that than Islands Brygge.

In summertime this neighbourhood is crowded with swimmers, drinkers, skaters and chillers - all checking out the beauty of the city... and probably each other. There's no doubt that this is where some of Copenhagen's most attractive people come for some time in the sun. 

MeatPacking District (Kodbyen)

Much like New York City's Meatpacking District, Copenhagen's old cattle markets have seen a recent rejuvenation, as young people embrace its large open spaces and old industrial buildings. 

While parts of the district are still used for the meat industry, since the early 2000s it's also emerged as a creative cluster, attracting galleries, restaurants, design firms and studios.

I recommend grabbing a coffee or beer and simply wandering around the district's streets; the mix of large, small, old and new buildings provide for a seemingly never-ending maze of beautiful hidden streetscapes. 

Out on my bike one afternoon, I spotted this chiller cycling into one of Norrebro's northern streets. It looks empty here, but not so far ahead, the intersections are lined with some of Copenhagen's best city life. 

Doing backflips into harbour pools in most cities will cause some nasty guard to yell and scream. In Copenhagen's Island Brygee, people are respected enough to not be babysat by authority.

Old warehouses lining the streets of the Meatpacking District, looking south towards the modern harbour edge.

Architecture

As soon as you step off the plane into Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport's beautifully designed terminals, you'll realise that this is a city that prides itself on clean, human-focused architecture. 

It's buildings comprise a full range of styles, all the way from the 17th century. In my opinion, however, it's the contemporary buildings which are some of the best: the Copenhagen Opera House and the Axel Towers to name just two.

Unlike the tall and bulky buildings in the US, Asia and the Middle East, Danish designers tend to focus on the details, such as fine shapes, curves and materials. As a result, the city has avery soft, and even feminine, feel to it. 

But my love for Copenhagen architecture is as much about the spaces between the buildings, as it is the buildings themselves. People here are not pushed to the edge of streets to make way for cars, and public spaces are not simply an urban designer's afterthought. This is a city where buildings have been shaped around open spaces - not the other way around. 

Copenhagen Opera House

New Axel Tower by Lundgaard Tranberg. Clean lines and shapes. Nice. 

Axel Towers

Within Copenhagen/Kastrup's airport terminal

Fashion

Copenhageners are a stylish bunch of people, but not in some 'edgy' up-your-own-ass-east-London kind of way. Instead, just like Copenhagen's architecture, nice design seems to be deeply embedded into Danish culture.

People on the street - young and old - have a generally distinctive Danish look: cuts are low and slouchy and logos are minimal. And even those who mix it all up and do something totally different still tend to look classy and timeless.

Andrew, the States and Delia, France.... Both spend a lot of time in the city, and love Norrebro for its clothing stores and bars.

"Ahh I have a hangover!" .... Live J.  plays the Cello by night and chills with friends in Norrebro by day . Casual hoodie, denim overalls and white sneakers... Copenhagen-style. 

The love for bikes

It'd be virtually impossible to write a post on Copenhagen without a mention of bicycles. 

As soon as you step foot in the city, you'll notice that just about everyone is on two wheels. But riding in Copenhagen is not about being a 'cyclist': it's not about lycra, helmets, bells, or reflectors. Bike riding in Copenhagen is about function, mixed with a bit of your own personal style. 

With lanes separating bikes from cars, moving through the city is a stress-free experience. It won't take you long to realise that every place in the world really should Copenhagenize. 

Fabian from Frederiksburg

"I pretty much don't go anywhere without my bike!" .... Olivia hanging with her friends down by Islands Brygge. 

Alec

Traffic congestion. Copenhagen-style.

I didn't grab this guy's name but he was super-friendly. Like most locals - was up for a good chat about his city.

A common street-view from just about any of Copenhagen's cafes.

Bicycle revolution or urban fad?

Cities across the world are seeing a dramatic increase in cycling. Is this a short lived fad, or are we witnessing the start of a revolution in urban transport?

The rise of the car in the 50s and 60s completely transformed cities – first across the USA, and then the world. Once centred around walkable shopping districts and train lines, cities began to spread into vast suburbs and homogenous landscapes.

Cars didn’t only change our cities, but they also changed our way of thinking. The car became a symbol of freedom, a symbol of maturity and a form of identity in the western world.

Today, we are seeing cities across the globe turn to alternative forms of mobility, and trains, trams and buses are back on the planning agenda in a big way. 60 years ago, one of the world’s most extensive tram networks (180 miles) was destroyed in Sydney, Australia, to make way for the private car. Today, the city is once again investing billions into a new light rail system that it hopes will relieve some of the city’s severe congestion.

We’re also seeing (re) investment into bicycle infrastructure in downtown districts across the globe. Over the last few years, cities like New York have constructed hundreds of miles of bike paths and bike share schemes are popping up in every corner of the globe – from Hangzhou’s ‘Public Bicycle’, to Paris’ Vélib’, to Montreal’s ‘Bixi’.

Pedalling home from work in Stockholm.

Bikes are also having a renewed surge of popularity. Portland hipsters are taking to the streets on fixies, east Londoners are dusting off vintage Raleighs and Sydney corporates are swapping golf clubs for lycra… As a result, the growth in cycling numbers has been immense in many cities worldwide. Italy has recently recorded that bike sales have outstripped car sales for the first time since World War II; the number of commuter cyclists in new York has doubled over the last five years; and for the first time in decades, a London borough (Hackney) has recorded that more people cycle to work (15%) than drive (12%).

Is all of this a revolution, or is it simply an urban fad?

The ‘bike boom’ of the United States saw similar trends in the late 60s and early 70s. Between ‘63 and ‘73 bike sales increased from 2.5 to 15 million, companies such as Union Carbide installed bike racks for employees and more than 50 cities across the country began planning bike paths with funding from the federal government. While there are many assumptions about why the American ‘bike boom’ ended, it’s likely that it had something to do with the end of the fuel crisis and recession.

Sunday morning shopping in the London borough of Hackney. 

Unlike America in the 70s, today we really are beginning to realise that our growth is unsustainable. We’re aware that we can no longer keep producing without recycling, we can no longer all own large homes, and we can no longer all drive to work – not only do our cars not all fit in our cities, but we are also running out of the very resource that drives them. There are simply too many of us. And yes, some argue that in our highly urbanised world, we could spread our wings by repopulating and revitalising rural areas. But not only do we rely on the economies of scale of cities to compete in the globalised world, but the ‘green’ countryside is also very ‘brown’. Those living in spacious rural areas generally have far greater environmental impacts than those in cities. As a result, we’re seeing transit-oriented housing developments, a move towards cleaner energy sources, urban congestion taxes and rising fuel prices. These are all putting pressure on  drivers and making the move to two wheels seem slightly more practical.

Is the movement global? Not every city is adopting bike use in the same way, and some cities aren’t moving towards bikes at all. An array of factors will determine how, exactly, these changes are occurring. Some cities already have a deeply embedded bike culture (Copenhagen), some cities have stubborn politicians (Sydney), some cities are simply too hot (Phoenix), too cold (Ulan Bator) or too vast (Los Angeles). But across the globe we are beginning to witness a shift in the way we think about urban mobility.

The car will not simply disappear and bicycles will not suddenly take over our streets. But as we look for alternative solutions to our current transport woes, cycling is suddenly looking like a pretty smart option.

Rather than just a fad, I’d argue that today’s boom will be sticking about for a while. Just like the revolution of a wheel, we are perhaps, returning to where it all began.

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The world is going two-wheeled: what's stopping Sydney?

Sydney’s transportation network is in crisis. Decades of dependence on the car have left the roads congested, the air polluted and residents - well – fat. Furthermore, with the city’s cheaper housing stretching out into its vast western suburbs, expensive and lengthy commutes have perpetuated the growing divide between the rich and poor. But we all know that cars in cities really are a thing of the past. Over the past couple of decades there has been mounting evidence that building more roads does not alleviate congestion and traffic within urban areas.

On top of research, dependence on the personal automobile is something that millenials no longer value or desire. Unlike American films of the 1970s, young people don’t want a car for their 18th birthday. In fact, an American study has found that driving by young people decreased by 23 per cent between 2001 and 2009. Today, people want to live in walkable neighbourhoods, close to places of work, education and friends. And surely, no one wants to be the designated driver.

Driving a car simply doesn’t offer a person in the city the freedom that your own two feet or a bicycle does.

For a long time, I dreamed that Sydney would embrace a cycling culture modelled on the success of Copenhagen. Copenhagen’s street design allows children to bike around cruise safely and freely, and encourages spontaneous social interaction during the daily commute.

Unfortunately, I began to give up on that dream sometime in my early 20s. I’m not sure if it was the time I was doored by a taxi on Oxford Street, the time I was thrown to the ground by a cop for riding on the pavement, or the time a guy in an SUV tried to ‘intimidate’ me by actually drive right into me. Or perhaps, it was one of the many other times that I feared for my life because a car driver didn’t see me.

After years of abuse on the roads, it’s become hard to imagine that things will ever change.

While the problems faced by bike riders may seem commonplace in many cities across the world, other cities are changing very quickly. And Sydney is not keeping up.

In many cities, we are seeing an urban transition. New York, LA, London, Paris and Mexico City, to name just a few, are all investing heavily into bicycle infrastructure, lowering speed limits and planning new transit networks. Even China is realising the transformational effects biking and cycling infrastructure can play. Hangzhou recently opened the world’s largest bike share network with over 60,000 bikes and almost 2,500 docking stations.

This is more than just a trend. By incorporating best practices in cycling infrastructure, cities across the world are seeing improved public health, a decrease in congestion and improvement to retail in high streets. Forward-thinking local governments realise this and start building segregated bike lanes and other cycling infrastructure – not more roads.

So, what's stopping Sydney?

In most conversation about bikes in Australian cities, you hear all sorts of strange arguments. ‘It’s too hot’, ‘too hilly’, ‘we aren’t dense like European cities’. In his book, Cycling Space, Tasmanian-based architect and academic Steven Fleming has shown us how ridiculous these arguments really are. Cities with some of the most extreme temperatures or have built environments characterised by massive amounts of sprawl have far higher levels of cycling than Australian cities.

The major problem in Sydney is poor communication. More specifically, the problem with Sydney is the Daily Telegraph.

New York has recently invested in miles of bikes paths and a hugely successful bike share system. Yes, there has been a lot of debate about these changes in the media. But the debate has been relatively balanced and healthy in the media.

Unlike New York, Sydney doesn’t seem to enjoy a very healthy dialogue in mainstream media. Particularly when it comes to a conversation about bikes. It’s not a debate when the media is dominated by Rupert Murdoch.

For months on end, we’ve seen article after article in what is a blatant attack on pro-bike politicians, policies and journalists from the Daily Telegraph. And the problem with any democratic planning system is that poor communication easily leads to poor decision-making.

But it gets much more personal that that. The way in which cycling ‘accidents’ are portrayed in the paper is downright disgusting. Roads were built for bikes and people, not cars. Yet cars take the lives of dozens of riders every year. How dare the telegraph misrepresent cycling deaths by blaming improper safety equipment. Cyclists are vulnerable road users and cars are to blame.

Sydneysiders know what’s good for our city. We know that more roads are a not the solution. So why do we put up with it? The generation before us didn’t.

Sydney’s Green Bans of the 1960s and 70s were a struggle that helped to give people in Sydney the freedoms they have today. Glebe, Redfern, The Rocks and Centennial Park, would not be the beautiful places they are today if it weren’t for Jack Mundey and the BLF.

Throughout the 1970s thousands of people joined a movement to ensure that the physical nature of our city was protected, preserved and enhanced, not destroyed by oversized development and inner city motorways.

If we want to see a better Sydney, it’s time we collectively stood up to bad press and poor planning decision. Write news articles, share experiences, tell planners that you wish to ride your bike safely and freely. It’s time to take the development of our city out of the hands of Murdoch and into our own.

No, Sydney is not a European city. But now is the time to make it just that little bit more like one.

Feature image courtesy Amsterdamized.

Policy mobilities, planning cultures and Cycle Superhighways

I recently had the opportunity to complete a dissertation on a topic of my choice. As expected, I decided to research bikes in the city...

Beginning the dissertation I envisioned undertaking a fairly straightforward analysis of how London has attempted to copy Copenhagen’s Cycle Superhighways (CSH). As with most research, it wasn’t long before I realised that the delivery of each of these policies wasn’t as straightforward as it first seemed.

While London and Copenhagen’s motivations for implementing CSH remained generally the same, their designs could hardly be more distinct. London’s blue splats of paint are hardly the safe and coherent, segregated cycle paths that stretch into and out of Copenhagen’s centre.

In reality, London has made no effort to actually ‘copy’ Copenhagen’s CSH network: it has merely copied the name.

While cycling around Copenhagen in the glorious summer months conducting an urban design analysis and interviews with planning professionals, I was faced with the complex question: how can London improve its cycling culture to become more like that of Copenhagen?

Copenhagen.

London. 

The answer is essentially quite simple: build it and they will come. But why has this been so difficult in London? Why does every cycle scheme ignore the need to build infrastructure that separates bikes and cars?

It wasn’t long before I was exploring the histories of both cities, making links between past events and contemporary transport planning culture.

On the one hand, Copenhagen has decades of experience in implementing segregated bike lanes (although it wasn’t always this way). On the other hand, London has a long history of implementing lousy, ad-hoc cycling schemes, which in a sense, continually try to please everybody, without actually pleasing anybody. This continues because of the status-quo mentality that runs deep within bodies like Transport for London.

How can London get out of this rut? With such a democratic approach to planning, how can it begin to finally close the ‘cycling credibility gap’ (relationship between acceptance of cycling culture and the level of infrastructure) - as I've termed it – without already having critical mass?

As a final recommendation, I’ve argued that London (ie. Boris) must finally begin to deliver sections of high quality cycling infrastructure. By communicating the benefits of fully segregated cycle paths, he can finally gain the momentum to persuade the lobby groups, institutions and various road users that this is exactly the long-term infrastructure London needs to become the cycling city it envisions itself to become.

Check out the full dissertation here: Policy mobilities, planning cultures and Cycle Superhighways (note: names of interviewees have been removed for privacy).

The revolution of the wheel

Photo by Scott Schuman 

I was riding my bike the other day, watching the cars stuck beside me in traffic. How crazy is it that the simple 19th century invention of the bicycle is still one of the best (or THE best) forms of transport that we have.

In many ways I feel like the wheel has almost completed an entire revolution. The rise of the car in the 1950s and 60s led to the reshaping of entire cities, first across the USA, and then the world. Once centered around walkable shopping districts and train lines, they began to spread into vast suburbs and homogenous urban landscapes. So too did the car change our way of thinking. It became a symbol of freedom, a symbol of maturity and a form of identity.

So what happened?

Just like in other aspects of modern society, we have begun to realise that growth is not necessarily sustainable. We can no longer keep producing without recycling, we can no longer own large homes on large blocks of land, and we can no longer all drive to work. There are simply too many of us. And yes, one could argue that we could spread our wings and repopulate and revitalise rural areas. But not only do we rely on the economies of scale of cities to compete in the globalised world, but the 'green' countryside is also very 'brown'. Those living in spacey rural areas generally have far greater environmental impacts than those in cities.

Exploring London on my bike

We have begun to see a tipping point. Do we keep consuming, keep producing and keep driving until we can't anymore? Or do we take a new approach?

We have already begun to see a return to a more minimalist western society, particularly through the rise of collaborative consumption and the return of the bicycle.

With and without government support, the bike has begun to make a return across the world. Whether people are sick of waiting in traffic for hours of their day, whether they can't afford road taxes, or whether there is simply no space to park, people have begun to swap the car for the bike. For ten years in a row, bike sales have outstripped car sales in Australia.

Some may call it a trend, but I'd say it's all part of a bigger revolution.

Not every city will adopt bike use in the same way, and some cities won't adopt bikes at all. An array of factors will determine how, exactly, these wheels will revolve. Some cities never moved away from the bike in the first place (Copenhagen), some cities have stubborn politicians (Sydney), some cities are simply too hot (Phoenix), too cold (Ulan Bator) or too vast (Los Angeles). But across the globe we are beginning to witness a shift in the way we think.

Just like the revolution of a wheel, we are perhaps, returning to where it all began.

On that note, I'd like to leave you with a film called Brussels Express. There are a lot of bike messenger films out on the web at the moment, but this one is particularly brilliant. Through the perspective of one courier, we can see a city that is hitting its tipping point. Will the bike be the answer to its problems?