Profile: Avedøre Stationsby

Nine and a half kilometers (six miles) from the center of the center of the once walled city of Copenhagen, a new walled city, Avedøre Stationsby (Avedore Station City), was erected during the peak of modernist planning and government investment in social housing in the 1970’s. This development covers 53 hectares (131 acres), about 30% less area than the original walled city of Copenhagen. It consists of two story row houses made of concrete cubes arranged in 90 degree angles around partial courtyards and parking areas, surrounded by a continuous wall of four story apartments.

One road passes through the “city” from the north at “Ropemaker’s Gate” and the east where there is a large gap in the apartment wall. The development is arranged around this road, with public institutions located along it and dead-end streets branching out mostly north and south. These form a grid with walking paths that mostly run east and west. Pedestrian paths also extend over the main road, which is sunken in the central portion of the development, with pedestrian bridges. The development is located adjacent to an S-train station with fast, frequent service to central Copenhagen.

Avedøre Stationsby epitomizes the climax of several important trends in housing in Copenhagen: the “finger plan” and the planning of suburban new towns along commuter rail lines; the move towards ever larger, more distant, and more self-contained developments; massive investment by the government in social housing; and the attempt to use rational methods in city planning, architecture, and construction to achieve optimal outcomes in living standards. Its distinctive form points to another nascent trend: an attempt to recreate some element of past urban forms. In this case that form is the walled city, which described Copenhagen in some form until 1867. The project also represents a thoughtful attempt to protect pedestrians from automobiles by providing a well-connected pedestrian network largely independent of vehicular routes.

Avedøre Stationsby contains 2,600 units, giving it a gross neighborhood density of 49 units per hectare (121 units per acre). The planned area includes a significant amount of open green space both outside the “wall” and within, as well as a large area dedicated to surface parking, both reducing the density. There are also child care centers, laundromats, a church, a secondary school, an elementary school, a library, a grocery store and a convenience store within the development and several shops and restaurants are located immediately to the east.

Avedøre Stationsby was one of the last large-scale multi-family suburban social housing projects constructed in greater Copenhagen. With the oil-shocks and financial stagnation of the 1970’s and 80’s the ability of the government to finance such projects declined; at the same time there was a growing cultural rejection of such projects with such a single-minded pursuit of standard of living improvements.