DotW #6 - Jan Gehl

Jan Gehl, 1936

First life, then spaces, then buildings - the other way around never works.

Jan Gehl is an architect and urban planner best known for his concepts regarding the gradual incremental redesign of modern cities to make them more livable. 

In 1960 Gehl earned his Masters of Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1966 he received a grant for "studies of the form and use of public spaces". The resulting work became Life Between Buildings, his treatise on the use of public space and the role it plays in enriching the lives of the people who use it.

The Copenhagen of the 50s and 60s was a very different place than it is today. Like many cities, it had become congested by automobile traffic. Today, one of the main, tourist or otherwise, attractions in Copenhagen is the Strøget, an open air pedestrian only shopping district. Below are pictures of the Strøget before pedestrianization. 

Here's a picture from 1968, just two years after pedestrianization.

And here is what it looks like today.

Here's nyhavn in 1966 and today.

And lastly, here's a shot of the Gl Strand before and after pedestrianization.

Today, Copenhagen is a city dominated by pedestrians and bicycles. In many ways it has become Gehl's model for urban re-development worldwide.

Gehl and his firm have provided their expertise to projects in Melbourne, Sydney, London, and New York City. 

David Byrne's book - yes that David Byrne - Bicycle Diaries was the inspiration for this post. I haven't finished it yet, but it has been a fun read. In it, he recounts several of his travel experiences, focusing on the people, composition, layout of the cities visited and, obviously, his cycling in them. In part, the chapter on Berlin pushed me to choose it as a travel destination. He has this to say about the modern city and the people who choose to inhabit it.

Our cities are alive, like us they have both a deep intelligence that guides them and a physical presence. They're both a brain and a body. They are our neural networks writ large, our psychological drives made physical, and by changing and fixing our cities we are reflecting similar changes going on inside. When our built world does not accurately correspond to our vision, to our physiology, and to our innate psychology, we suffer and feel alienated, as if we are inhabiting the wrong body or mind. When our surroundings are more aligned with us, we fit better, more comfortably. The rewards are immense and wide-ranging. But mostly it's just more fun. 

I feel like a complete poser writing this post without yet owning / riding a bicycle. The word yet is key to my salvation.

Thanks to the following sources, inspirations.

- This article from NovaTerra. I grabbed much info and the Gl Strand pic.

- This article from Project for Public Spaces. More info and most of the before / after pics.

- And, as mentioned above, David Byrne's, Bicycle Diaries. It's a compilation of different blog posts, journal entries, etc and as such is a little haphazard, but it's fun. He's sometimes a bit heavy handed, but I've enjoyed it.

To end, I apologize to the actual urban planners / architects in the audience for my amateurish look at the subject. I'm sure there are many more interesting things to say about Gehl and his work. Mostly, I find the concept fascinating. Our cities should be places where we actually live and breath, not just places where we work or visit on the occasional weekend.