Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
pavements, adding traffic barriers, and often a myriad of traffic lights. Since cars
were privately owned and usually occupied by one person, the effect has been to
priorize private cars in what had been public spaces, while the focus on high value
buildings turned many downtown areas into single-use areas. Not surprisingly, a
reaction set in against such developments, with attempts to apply many of the same
ten principles of more sustainable practices outlined above to create new standards
of liveability, especially in central city areas. Among the many different types of
change has been the attempt to reclaim the major shopping streets and public places
from their devastation by automobile use, with the objective of making these places
more sustainable and more people-friendly.
By the late 1970s many people in western cities regretted the type of de-
humanizing urban renewals that had occurred and most municipalities created at
least one pedestrianized street in the central retailing area. The success of these de-
velopments and recognition of the problems of congestion caused by the car also led
to the widespread use of building set-backs for new high-rise towers to create more
open space at a street level. Despite the initial opposition of retailers, who felt they
would lose trade if customers were unable to park outside their doors, these streets
have been successful in most cities, although the attraction of homeless people and
beggars to some of these areas has required careful and sensitive policing to pre-
vent annoyances and crime. The utility of these revitalizing developments has been
shown by planner-architects such as Jan Gehl in Denmark, whose ideas are sum-
marized in his topic
Cities are for People
(Gehl
2010
). His emphasis on 'people, not
cars or large scale projects' developed from his careful study of streets in Copenha-
gen in the early 1960s, observing behaviour in these areas and counting pedestrian
flows. Gehl argued that safe and well-designed public spaces will attract people to
sit, stroll, meet, shop, or simply to be seen and to be entertained, essentially reviv-
ing some of the functions of the old agora in Greek cities, although these were also
places of religion and politics. Also he argued for the greater use of what he called
'green mobility', where most movements are by public transport, biking and walk-
ing, using the policies discussed in the previous Sect. 6.4 on transport. Not only do
the latter two mobility options provide exercise and improve health, but the greater
use of streets by people improves their safety, especially if transport stops are linked
to well-developed and attractive public spaces. Gehl's detailed studies showed the
value of pedestrianizing the main axis of narrow shopping streets in Copenhagen
that ran through the old medieval city. The zone, already shown on Fig.
6.2
, is now
known as the Strget and was first turned into a pedestrian zone as a temporary
measure for the Christmas period in 1962. The initial success led to the pedestrian
only being made permanent and its 1200 m length contains many of the most im-
portant commercial premises in the city as well as including several squares. It
now runs from the nineteenth century Radhausplat (City Hall place), near the main
railway station, to the Kongens Nytorv (King's New Square) on the western edge of
the city's eighteenth century Renaissance developments, near the famous Nyhaven,
originally a new seventeenth century quay for ships but now dominated by restau-
rants and related businesses. Recent surveys have shown that some 80,000 people a
day regularly use the Strget in the height of the summer, with half that number in
