By Paul Makovsky

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.

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.




City Center

Pedestrians use the public space along the canal for eating, strolling, and taking in the sunshine.

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.



Stroget

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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.