The book by Ian Gale and Birgitt Svarre "How to Study City Life" has been translated into Russian by the Concern "KROST" by order of the Moscow Government and the Department of Nature Management and Environmental Protection of the city of Moscow.
Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is the first city in the world to host comprehensive, comprehensive studies of urban life for decades; the city where the results of these studies for more than 40 years have been determining the policy in relation to public life; a city where municipal authorities and business communities have gradually realized that the study of urban life is a tool so valuable for the development of the urban environment that it has long since passed from the research arsenal of the School of Architecture to the full jurisdiction of the city itself. In Copenhagen, everyone is already accustomed to the fact that urban life is periodically recorded and studied in dynamics, just like other elements that make up the essence of a comprehensive urban policy. This chapter shows how Copenhagen has come to this.
Pedestrian street since 1962
Copenhagen's main street, Stroget, was banned for traffic back in November 1962 and was given over to pedestrians. Of course, this did not happen without friction, and many spears were broken in furious and noisy disputes, when opponents of this step with foam at the mouth argued: “We are Danes, not some Italians, and from your pedestrian spaces with our Scandinavian weather and our northern culture will not do the slightest bit. But Stroeget was still closed to traffic, which was an innovation at the time.
In Europe, the Stroeget was the first major street where the move demonstrated the authorities' determination to ease the pressure from road transport on the city center. In this Copenhagen followed the example of many cities in Germany, which during the reconstruction after the Second World War set up pedestrian streets. At the same time, the city authorities primarily intended to revitalize trade in the central part of the city and create more convenient places for shopping.
Stroeget was transformed into a pedestrian zone along its entire 1.1 km journey, including several small squares "strung" on it, and across its entire width of 11 m. Despite ominous predictions that in the Danish climate and the Danish way of life the idea of a pedestrian zone will fail miserably, Stroeget quickly gained popularity among Copenhageners. During the first "car-free" year, pedestrian traffic on the Stroget increased by 35%. In 1965, the pedestrian status of Stroeget became permanent from an experimental one, and by 1968 the city authorities expressed a desire to change the road surface on the streets and squares. Stroeget has become a widely recognized example of success.
Exploring Urban Life at the School of Architecture, First Steps: 1966-1971
In 1966, Ian Gale was offered the position of Research Scientist at the School of Architecture, and his research topic was formulated as "The use of open spaces in cities and residential areas." By that time, Gail had already conducted a number of studies on this topic in Italy, and in 1966, together with his wife, psychologist Ingrid Gail, published a number of articles on their results in the special Danish journal Arkitekten. The articles described how Italians used public spaces in their daily life, including city squares, and since no one had studied this topic at that time, Gale's publications made some splash in the scientific world. A new area of research was gradually taking shape.
Gale was then invited to continue his studies at the School of Architecture, now with a four-year contract. Time itself dictated to Gale the need to look at the newly-made pedestrian street Stroeget, which seemed to be asking for the role of a huge scientific laboratory in the open air with plenty of opportunities to study how people use public space.
There is no doubt that Gale's Copenhagen studies were fundamental. Little was known about the subject of study at that time, so it was necessary to find answers to a variety of scientific questions. In 1967 and subsequent years, the study of Stroeget turned into a large-scale research project. Basic information about the number of pedestrians and the scale of street activity was just a drop in the sea of information accumulated over those years.
The research was carried out by observing and documenting street life at different sections of the pedestrian Stroeget on Tuesdays throughout the year, and in addition, information was collected on selected weeks and weekends, as well as during the holidays and during the holiday season. How does the street function when Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II is passing by? How does a narrow street cope with the huge crowds during the Christmas rush? The daily, weekly and annual rhythms of the public life of the street were recorded and analyzed, the differences in the winter and summer seasons were identified, and a wide variety of issues were studied. How fast are pedestrians walking down the street? How are benches used? What are the most popular seating areas? How much should the air temperature rise for people to start sitting on benches for quite a long time? How do rain, wind and frost affect people's behavior outside, and what role do sunny and shady places play? How does darkness and illumination affect the behavior of pedestrians? To what extent do climate and weather changes affect the behavior of different groups of people? Who goes home first, and who stays on the street the longest?
During this time, Gale accumulated a wealth of material and used it as the basis for his book "Living Among Buildings", which was published in 1971 and combined under its cover the original research in Italy and the most recent at that time in Copenhagen. Even before the book was published, Gale published articles in Danish professional publications, which attracted the attention of city planners, politicians and the business community. Thus began a continuous dialogue between urban life researchers from the School of Architecture and people from the city planning administration, politicians and businessmen.
From a street in Denmark to … universal recommendations
First published in 1971, Living Among Buildings has been reprinted many times in Danish and English, and has also been translated into many other languages, from Farsi and Bengali to Korean. Although the book provides examples mainly from Denmark, its enormous appeal to readers around the world can be explained by the fact that the observations and principles set out in it are universal: no matter what country we are talking about, people everywhere are pedestrians to one degree or another.
The design of the cover has changed over the years, following cultural changes, and also due to the fact that the book became more international as the time went on. The picture on the left reproduces the original cover of the first Danish edition of the book. The street binge scene was spied on in Aarhus, Denmark's second largest city, circa 1970, and the photo captures the community atmosphere that prevailed at the time. You might even think that it was the hippies who set up their camp among the buildings. The cover of the 1980 edition depicts a quiet, public life set in a classic Scandinavian town, while the cover of the 1996 and later editions looks “timeless” and “cosmopolitan” thanks to graphic tricks, and is partly a tribute to the fact that the book has become a classic. and is equally relevant for any geographic location and for any period of time.
A Study of Urban Life in Copenhagen, 1986
Meanwhile, a new series of changes unfolded in the city center. The already transformed urban space expanded with new pedestrian streets and car-free squares. At the initial stage (1962), a public space with a total area of 1.58 hectares was organized in Copenhagen, free from car traffic; by 1972 it increased to 4.9 hectares, and after 1980 it exceeded 6.6 hectares, when the street of the same name running along the Nyhavn canal in the harbor area was transformed into a pedestrian zone.
In the same 1986, a comprehensive study of urban life was repeated in Copenhagen, as last time, under the auspices of the School of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1967–68. the studies were mostly tentative and rather concise, which made it necessary to carry out them again in 1986 in order to find out what changes have taken place in the public life of Copenhagen over the past 18 years. Research 1967–68. laid the foundations and revealed the general picture of the city's life, and the data for 1986 showed how public life changed and what role the significantly increased pedestrian zones played in this.
In an international context, the 1986 studies marked the first time a pivotal event was conducted in the city. This opened up the opportunity to document the development of urban life in the city over longer periods of time.
In 1986 (as after the first study), the results were published as an article in the architecture magazine Arkitekten and rekindled widespread interest in urban planning, as well as in political and business circles. It not only showed the state of urban life in the present, but also gave an overview of the changes that have occurred over almost two decades. In short, the main finding was that by 1986 there were significantly more people and a variety of activities on the streets of the city, which proved that the new urban spaces brought a corresponding revitalization and diversity to urban life. The conclusion suggests itself that the better the public space, the more people and all kinds of activity it attracts.
In addition, a study of Copenhagen public life in 1986 laid the foundation for subsequent studies of urban space - urban life. It includes (as it does today) the registration of many types and types of spatial relationships (urban space) and supplements them with the study of life in the city (urban life), and together it documents how the city as a whole and its individual spaces function.
The 1986 study catalyzed closer collaboration between academics from the School of Architecture and city planners. Seminars and meetings were held to discuss the prospects for the development of urban life and development plans for Copenhagen. They attracted attention in the capitals of Denmark's Scandinavian neighbors, and soon, with the assistance of the Copenhagen School of Architecture, similar studies were carried out in Oslo and Stockholm.
Research in Copenhagen 1996 and 2006
Ten years later, in 1996, Copenhagen became the European City of Culture of the Year and many events were planned to commemorate this event. The School of Architecture decided that its contribution to the common celebration should be another comprehensive study of "urban space - urban life." Gradually, this research became a trademark feature of Copenhagen. Public life was already documented in 1968 and 1986, and now, 28 years later, it was planned to again explore and document the public spaces of the city and its public life.
The 1996 studies were large-scale and extensive in design. In addition to numerous head counts and observations, the research program also included surveys of residents, which would highlight those aspects that could not be touched upon either in 1968 or in 1986. Who is visiting the city center, where are these people coming from and what types of transportation do they use to get to the city? What brought these people to the city, how often do they come here and how long do they stay, what are their positive and negative impressions of the city? It was supposed to find out the answers to these questions directly from the users themselves, and this would add another useful layer of information to the observation results.
Although scholars from the School of Architecture remained the main driving force, the research project itself was no longer a narrowly focused academic endeavor. It has received support from a number of foundations, the Copenhagen municipal government, as well as tourism and cultural institutions and business communities. Urban space - urban life research has definitely taken on a different status: instead of an orientation project, it has become a generally accepted way of gathering knowledge for the management of urban center development.
The research results of 1996 were already published in the form of the book "Public Space and Public Life" under the authorship of J. Gale and L. Gemzo. The book contained not only the results of research carried out over the years, but also traced the development of Copenhagen's urban center from 1962, and, in addition, provided an overview of the measures to transform the city from a congested urban area into a city where it is customary to take the needs of pedestrians seriously. … The book was published in Danish and English, thus, for the first time presented to an English-speaking audience.
Over the years of research, "urban space - urban life" and the vector of Copenhagen's development to strengthen and maintain urban life have received international recognition, and the success story of the Danish capital "went for a walk" around the world. In 2005, Public Space and Public Life was published in Chinese.
In 2006, the School of Architecture for the 4th time conducted a comprehensive study of urban life, now on the basis of the recently established Center for Public Space Research; the task was to study how urban space and urban life develop not only in the heart of the city, but also in all other parts of it: from the center to the periphery, from the medieval core to the most recent new buildings. The data collection was funded by the Copenhagen authorities, and scientists from the School of Architecture analyzed and published the results. The result was a voluminous work called New Urban Life, authored by Jan Gale, Lars Gemzo, Sia Kirknes and Britt Søndergaard.
The title of the book successfully formulated the main conclusion of the researchers: an increase in leisure time and resources, as well as changes in society, have created a “new urban life”, and now the main thing that happens in the city center has one way or another to do with leisure and cultural activity. If two or three generations ago, necessary, purposeful activities prevailed on the urban stage, now the spectrum of human activity in the urban space has been significantly enriched. At the beginning of the XXI century. “Recreational urban life” has become a major player in the way public space is used.
Looking at urban space and urban life as urban politics
In 1960-1990. Copenhagen's development was taken care of on two fronts: the School of Architecture created and developed the science of urban space and urban life as a separate scientific field, and the city authorities transformed the traffic streets and squares into pedestrian and restricted traffic areas in order to encourage citizens and visitors to Copenhagen more use them for pastime. In principle, these two fronts did not coordinate their efforts in any way, and each acted on its own. But Copenhagen and, by the way, the whole of Denmark is a rather close community, and everything here, one might say, is in full view of each other. People from the Copenhagen municipality, planners and politicians from all over Denmark followed the progress of research at the School of Architecture, and researchers, in turn, kept their finger on the pulse of the changes in the cities.
Over the years, the periodic exchange of information has improved, and it became clear that the views on urban planning and urban development in Denmark are increasingly influenced by the numerous publications, scientific research and open discussions in the media, which naturally emerged in the process of the research of urban life conducted by the School of Architecture. Soon, few doubted that the attractiveness of urban space and urban life played an important role in the competition between cities.
In practice, this change in worldview was expressed in the fact that urban life has turned from an object of purely academic interest into an influential factor in real urban planning policy. Copenhagen's urban space-urban life study has become as much a cornerstone of urban planning as traffic research has always been for transport planning.
It can be stated that documenting the dynamics of public life and understanding the relationship between the quality of urban space and urban life serve as effective arguments in the debate about the transformation of the city, as well as for assessing the plans already implemented and setting goals for future development.
Internationally, Copenhagen has acquired a reputation as a very attractive and welcoming city over the years.
Copenhagen's main and trademark features are its concern for pedestrians, cyclists and the quality of city life. At every opportunity, city politicians and planners point out the curious relationship between studying Copenhagen's public life and the city's concern for urban space and urban life. “Without the extensive research carried out by the School of Architecture, we, as politicians, would not have had the courage to implement many of the projects that have ultimately increased the attractiveness of our city,” said Bente Frost, head of the city's architecture and construction department in 1996. It is important to note that over the years Copenhagen has turned more and more towards urban life and urban space, seeing them as decisive factors in the overall quality of the city and its good reputation in the world.
By the way, not only in Copenhagen, the policy of the city authorities is based on the knowledge that systematic research and documentation of public life provides. Now other cities in the world have initiated similar studies. It is no coincidence that the transformation of cities based on the systematic collection of data on public life is now called “copenhagenization”.
Uzhev 1988–1990 Oslo and Stockholm began conducting research on urban life. In 1993-1994. Perth and Melbourne, Australia, introduced the practice of urban space-urban life research, following similar studies in Copenhagen as a model. Since that time, the methods of such studies have rapidly gained worldwide popularity, and in 2000-2012. spread to Adelaide, London, Sydney, Riga, Rotterdam, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, New York, Seattle and Moscow.
The initial basic research of the city is done mainly to get a general idea of how people use the city in everyday life. Knowing this, the city can draw up development plans and embark on practical transformations.
More and more cities, following the example of Copenhagen, are adopting periodic urban-urban life surveys to understand how urban life develops in relation to the benchmarks set by the original research. In cities such as Oslo, Stockholm, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, following initial research, urban space and urban life are periodically studied at intervals of 10-15 years as part of city-wide policy. For example, a 2004 re-study in Melbourne provides the best evidence of how dramatic city life can be improved for the better if targeted urban policies are implemented. Commendable results, recorded in 2004, allowed Melbourne to set new, even more daring goals, the results of which will be the subject of subsequent similar studies.
There are different ways to answer the question of what the various ratings of the most livable cities in the world teach us. But the abundance of such ratings appearing in recent years speaks volumes. Monocle magazine has been compiling such ratings since 2007. In 2012, the top ten rating according to Monocle looks like this: 1. Zurich. 2. Helsinki. 3. Copenhagen. 4. Vienna. 5. Munich. 6. Melbourne. 7. Tokyo. 8. Sydney. 9. Auckland. 10. Stockholm. It is noteworthy that in 6 of the top 10 cities in the ranking, research was conducted "public space - public life". These cities have devoted themselves to efforts to become even more convenient for people, for the sake of which city public spaces and public life have been painstakingly studied. These are: Zurich, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Stockholm.
Last thoughts
In the more than 50 years that have passed since 1961, when Jane Jacobs painfully and anxiously described the perspective of deserted, extinct cities, the study of urban life and urban space, like his methods, took a giant step forward. At the time of Jacobs, there was still no formalized knowledge of how the forms of organization of urban space affect life in cities. Cities were built in many ways to meet the needs of public life, and it was she who served as a starting point for urban planners of the past. But since about the 1960s, when the dominance of road transport and rapid urbanization radically changed the idea of the city, city planners have been unarmed, lacking the experience of developing such cities, as well as the ability to rely on the historical traditions of urban planning. First, it was required to understand the picture of these new cities with a dying out public life, and then to accumulate knowledge on this subject. The first steps in this direction were taken as a trial and mostly intuitively, but eventually allowed amateur researchers to rise to generalization and consistency, acquiring the necessary professionalism. Today, 50 years later, we see that an extensive bank of basic knowledge has been accumulated, and research methods are constantly being improved.
Urban life, once dropped from the eye of urban planners, now takes its rightful place as a scientific field in its own right, and its impact on the attractiveness of cities is taken for granted.
Examples from the life of Copenhagen and Melbourne clearly show how scientific research, research "urban space - urban life", foresight, political will and purposeful actions win the city world fame - and not due to the incredible high-rise silhouette and the greatest monuments, but thanks to the comfortable inviting public spaces and vibrant city life. These cities are really very comfortable and attractive for life, work and tourism precisely because they took care of people in the first place. In the XXI century. Copenhagen and Melbourne year after year firmly hold the top positions in the ratings "The most comfortable cities for life in the world."
Good cities are where everything is for people and their benefits.
