Classic Book Review. Gehl, J. and Gemzoe, L. (1996), Public Spaces, Public Life.
Literature Review
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Gehl, J. and Gemzoe, L. (1996), Public Spaces, Public Life, Copenhagen: The Danish Architectural Press and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Jan Gehl and Lars Gemzoe note that the heavy pedestrian traffic does not mean anything about the quality of the pedestrian areas. The quality of public places can be realized when they function as a space where people stop walking, sit down, spend time, and enjoyably engage in the street activities.
The authors has documented the changes of the way people use the public spaces in the Copenhagen inner city, Denmark, since 1962 when the old main street Stroget was converted to a pedestrian street. Since then, Copenhagen has been through a transition of the public spaces from being the overcrowded traffic environments to quiet yet dynamic people-oriented urban recreation forms. The main pedestrian streets in Copenhagen were developed between 1962 and 1973, followed by the creation of squares. At the outset, shopping was the main activities in those public spaces, which later turned to active recreational and cultural arenas. The number of parking lots has been reduced 2-3% per year to give space for the flourishing public life that has increase 3-4 times since the late 1960s. The vitality of the public life was also owed to Copenhagen’s fine scale of medieval city structures, even distribution of functions, and the substantial number of students and residents in the inner city.
The important aspect of the development in Copenhagen is the gradual, slow process. Car drivers and cyclists have had time to change traffic habits, with pedestrians having had time to find out ways of using the new spaces. Politicians have had time to think and to make decisions based on the success with the first pedestrian street.
The idea of using streets as a social and recreational space evolved since 1961 when Jane Jacobs described urban development of American cities in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The transformation of Stroget is, therefore, parallel to the 1960s movements against traffic and its ensuing deterioration of the conditions for people. Pedestrian street initiatives were commenced by different entities. The Stroget transformation was possible by urban policy initiatives, rather than by public needs; in Northern Village area, Korea, an aggregate area for small shops specializing in traditional artifacts and crafts, shopkeepers needed to create peaceful car-free streets in order to draw tourists into shopping. While those pedestrian streets were initially based on a commercial concept, there developed various cultural activities involving visitors and shoppers.
Although most of Danes objected the Stroget conversion, by complaining that “We are Danes, not Italians” or “Using public space is contrary to Nordic mentality,” the firstly converted pedestrian-oriented street turned out a success. I believe that it is national or cultural traits that determine the use of public places; the relation between man and its environments are interpreted through a cultural filter, as Rapoport mentioned. In this sense, the study by Gehl and Gemzoe seem to overlook cultural variables in the explanation of the quality of public life in Copenhagen, Denmark.