Planning for people
by Henning Thomsen, Gehl Architects
People...
'A sustainable city is a city that takes care of its people'. This is how world renowned Danish urbanist, Jan Gehl, boils it down. Simple. No more, no less.
It's not far from the original credo of sustainability, coined under the auspices of and attributed to the great Norwegian Prime Minister and UN envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland. In her words, "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Future generations are people. Sustainability is planning for those people.
Of course, one would rush to say. Of course, planning should be for people. But then think, ponder just how much of the current world is shaped and formed as if people where anything but what they are. As if flesh, bones, emotions, love, and feelings were not part of people's everyday life. Modernist planning took all this away, and left us with cities built by architects that had become obsessed with the rationalist faith and had forgotten all about people. No place and no space for people is what we inherited from many of the modernists.
This has to change. We should not leave the functional ideas behind altogether. They have indeed helped shape many of the institutions and innovations we thrive on today. But the rationalist faith must be re-balanced with the humanistic faith. A faith that has been part of art and architecture and city-building far longer, as it were, than the historically very recent rationalist faith.
It is being shown around the world today that sustainability and modernity can indeed go hand in hand. It requires thoughtful people, planning by people for people, as it were.
An exciting and recent attempt at making contemporary, people friendly city-building is being carried out in Copenhagen in the central location where once the mighty Carlsberg brewery had its facilities. A private developer, Carlsberg commissioned the world's architects to come up with a humanistic and sustainable masterplan for the development of the 33 ha site. The result, by Danish architects Entasis, builds on the century old wisdom of city-building that has shaped many European cities. Public spaces are driving the design, not individual buildings. The texture and fabric of the existing blends with the new. Mixed use is being propagated.
Rather than to start with a tabula rasa, Entasis have created a humanistic village in the city. Planning for people in a contemporary setting. It can be done.
