Conclusions I

What are dense neighborhoods like in Copenhagen? What elements comprise these neighborhoods? What are the predominant building types? How do typical buildings shape their form?

This research project was undertaken to answer the above questions. We have learned about the character and history of a range of neighborhoods in Copenhagen. Those neighborhoods that had the most to say about the city as a whole were selected for further analysis, and a fundamental building type of was described for each of these neighborhoods which arises from its history and determines its structure and character.

Despite the differences between these types there is also a clear lineage among them. These related types share features despite the more than 200 year time span and enormous advances in technology they encompass. These include:

Stairwell organization: with two or three units on each floor grouped around a stairwell. This eliminates the need for internal corridors and by provides greater interaction with the street than a single entry point. It also makes possible narrower buildings than are common in Seattle.
Narrow buildings: ranging from about 9 to 12 m ( ft) in width in most cases. This increases the feasibility of linear arrangements.

Linear arrangements: especially the encirclement of the block.
Natural light from two directions: with windows both of the street and courtyard sides. This is possible because of the lack of internal corridors and the narrowness of buildings.

Courtyards: creating an area which is clearly removed from the public realm. These are present for most of the building types described, with the exception of the late-stage Welfare Era type. This maximizes the usable land for residents by devoting nearly all the unbuilt land to a semi-private use. Of course, courtyards must be well maintained and somewhat limited in size in order to maintain their usefulness and privacy.

Limited Height: The building types described fall within the range of 3-6 stories tall. Elevators did not become universal in multi-story buildings in Copenhagen until quite recently and even then they did not lead to a dramatic increase in height, with the taller Livability Era apartments only rising to a maximum of about 12 stories. This means that these buildings have a stronger connection with the ground level and the population is distributed more evenly across the city than would occur with high-rise development.

Masonry and concrete construction: In the early 19th century half-timber construction was abandoned in favor of bricks. Wood beams were used as lateral elements - for floors and roofs, until concrete construction became widespread in the 1950’s. The lack of earthquake risk means that even old masonry buildings are safe for habitation. This reduces redevelopment pressure on historic areas, strengthening the connection to historic built fabric.

All of these features have been regulated by the government in some fashion historically and in the present. Some early regulations are discussed in the report, although as time goes on housing legislation becomes more detailed and less accessible to the English-speaking researcher. Generally we can say that regulation merely codifies some version of what society deems acceptable, and that it is therefore one of many factors that goes into the shaping of building traditions.

The above qualities all contrast with the common characteristics of multi-family housing in Seattle which generally consists of freestanding, thick, double-loaded corridor buildings of highly variable height. Mid-rise multi-family buildings are now constructed of wood and older masonry structures are in need of seismic retrofits due to earthquake risk. These buildings occupy small areas of the city creating pockets of high population density surrounded by large areas of single-family homes.

My interest in the distinct morphologies created by our respective building types and traditions is what prompted this study. The effects that these morphologies have on the quality of public realms is worth researching further.

Sydhavn

Southwest of Vesterbro railroad tracks and industrial land occupy large areas of land creating barriers to movement. Two large parks occupy a significant portion of what is left. In the spaces between these elements the neighborhood of Sydhavn ("South Harbor") is located.

Sydhavn is a working-class neighborhood, composed exclusively of large blocks of flats constructed in the early 20th century. These brick buildings are 5 and 6 stories high and present continuous, unadorned facades to the street. Landscaped areas are spread throughout the neighborhood in open areas between buildings and the street and in building courtyards, some of which are open on one side. These courtyards are large open spaces purposely designed to be amenities for residents, and have never had any backbuildings or economic uses. The scale of this neighborhood is noticeably different from Vesterbro, with wider streets, more open areas, and entire block-faces occupied by a single building.

Sydhavn developed adjacent to industrial land along the city’s central harbor and railroad network. That area was the city’s industrial heart until the 1960’s and 70’s and areas like Sydhavn housed its labor force. Today the former-industrial brown-field sites near Sydhavn are being developed with corporate offices and high-end apartments. Meanwhile, Vesterbro to the north-east has become increasingly gentrified and unaffordable, putting the residents of Sydhavn in an uncomfortable situation. They want investment in their neighborhood and apartments, but fear losing the affordable rents they still enjoy.

Neighborhoods like Sydhavn appeared throughout Copenhagen starting in the 1910’s. At that time the government began to be more actively involved in the housing sector, updating regulations and making financing more readily available, and increasingly becoming involved in the planning of large-scale projects. Prominent architects became involved in the movement away from the flashy facades and rustic interiors of the late 19th century towards the priority of amenities for residents and efficiency of construction. These changes influenced development patterns of the way the outer sections of the brokvarter neighborhoods as well as the next ring of perimeter neighborhoods such as Nordvest, Vanløse, Valby, and this study area from 1920-1940. Buildings of this type are described as Welfare Era Blocks of Flats in the typology section of this report.

Sydhavn has a gross neighborhood density of about 178 DU per hectare (72 DU per acre).

Christiania

Christiania is one of Copenhagen’s most famous neighborhoods. It is an autonomous community within Copenhagen in former military base on the south-eastern side of the city harbor. The former barracks and ramparts were occupied in 1971, and in the decades since a remarkable autonomous community has developed. Cars are prohibited, city authorities do not enter, and cannabis is freely sold.

Much of the building stock in Christiania is made up of former military buildings, some dating from the late renaissance when the defensive ramparts were first constructed. These have been liberally converted and adapted by artists and builders, both residents and visitors to the community. They serve as residences but also concert and meeting halls, studios, workshops, and bars and restaurants. The leafy walking paths between homes and common areas give a strong feeling of an enclosed, protected, unique place, while the lively plaza on the southern end is popular with outsiders and tourists for its relaxed atmosphere and food, music, booze and bud.

The occupation of Christiania marks a clear rejection of the trends of increasing government intervention, spatial scale, mass-production and top-down planning of both multi-family housing and the rapidly expanding tracts of single-family houses in the suburbs of the 1960’s and 70’s. In Christiania no two buildings are alike, things are made by hand, simple technology rules, capitalism is viewed warily and decisions are made at the lowest level possible, with only the most important matters elevated to the community as a whole for a consensus-based decision.

With a population of 850 occupying about 34 hectares (84 acres) Christiania has a population density of only 25 per hectare (10 per acre). Property is not bought or sold, but when a new space opens up the community decides who to invite. In a way this process, relying on social rather than financial capital, is similar to the many housing co-operatives in more conventional parts of the city where rent and buy-in costs are affordable, but openings can be hard to come by.

 

Profile: Bellahoj

Bellahoj is housing project consisting of two clusters of residential towers on 2.6 hectares (6.5 acres) located on the western periphery of Copenhagen. These buildings represent an unusual building type in Denmark: the “towers in the park” conceived and promoted by the modernist architect and urban planner, Le Corbusier. They were also influenced by similar designs for public housing that later became popular in Sweden.

The Bellahoj towers stand between 9 and 13 stories tall and are surrounded by landscaped open space including playgrounds and gardens. They also have a large space at the front of the project devoted to surface parking lots. These building were constructed in 1956 as social housing, winners of a design competition to explore innovative building styles for Danish public housing. Each story has two units, which are accessed via central core with stairs and an elevator. The location of the towers on the most significant hill in Copenhagen provides them with expansive views of the city.

The Bellahoj towers are a departure from the the typical style of Danish multi-family housing which usually consists of long, narrow buildings accessed by stairs; to this day they remain among the tallest buildings in the city. They represent a continuation of the trend in government-planned social housing flats toward large scale, rationalist site plans, with weakening relationships to streets and traditional block structures. However, the location of the towers in an idyllic setting, with well designed traditional parks, a nearby pond, and the majestic view of the city gives this development a better connection with its surroundings than many contemporary projects.

The towers continue to serve as social housing and on a walk through their ample greens one can see children and families playing, calling out in many languages. The buildings, like many constructed of concrete in this era, have had maintenance issues including problems with mold, leaks, and rotting window and doorframes. Not counting adjacent parkland, the gross neighborhood density within the development is 127 DU per hectare (51 DU per acre).

That's what the other side of the pond looks like, just so you know.

Sources:

Hiort, Esbjørn. Housing in Denmark since 1930. Copenhagen: J. Gjellerup Forlag, 1952. Print.

Larsen, Jacob N. "From Slum Clearance and Housing Renewal to Networking and Area-based Approaches: On the Origins of Contemporary Danish Urban Development Programmes." On the Origins of Urban Development Programmes in Nine European Countries. Ed. Helle Nørgaard. Antwerp: Garant, 2003. 46-58. Print.

http://www.sab-bolig.dk/da-dk/boligafdelinger/afdelinger-paa-en-liste/bellahoej-i-og-ii.aspx

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.

Profile: Norrebro

Like its twin Vesterbro, Nørrebro is one of the brokvarter, a dense neighborhood largely built up during the late-19th century in the height of the industrial revolution. Also like Vesterbro, Nørrebro was targeted by the city in the mid and late 20th century due to crime, derelict and degraded buildings, and the flight of the middle-class. Nørrebro was the city’s first urban renewal district and as such was the recipient of a major investment in slum-clearance and redevelopment in the 1970’s and 80’s.

These programs sought to demolish older tenement buildings, especially courtyard buildings which tended to be of poorer quality and lacked direct access to the street. They were replaced with lower density blocks of flats owned by social housing associations. These buildings tend to be much longer than those they replaced meaning they could dominate entire block-faces, and had unadorned facades, mechanized construction materials and methods, and an overall distant, institutional character. They also had far fewer units than in the razed tenements, exacerbating a growing housing shortage.

This process of demolition and redevelopment saw a backlash in the 1980’s, both by typical neighborhood residents and a group of disaffected youth who, in the absence of affordable housing, took to squatting in many of the condemned buildings. Attempts by the city to evict the squatters lead to a series of clashes between these youth, who came to be known as the BZ, and the city throughout the 80’s, 90’s and aughts over urban renewal programs, including several large scale riots and street clashes with police. Later urban renewal programs abandoned this approach in favor of investments in existing building stock, in addition to investments in public areas and community organizations.

Nørrebro today remains a gritty neighborhood. Many buildings are covered in graffiti and a large Muslim immigrant population has made the district its home. At the same time, gentrification in the sections of the neighborhood closest to downtown has already displaced some of the low-income population. The neighborhood is a mix of restored late 19th century buildings and 70's-80's social housing blocks, with a few heavy traffic arteries crossing through.

The neighborhood around Superkilen park epitomizes the district, with the award-winning park, a large community center with a wealth of inventive programs, and a public library all within a block of each other. The park lies at the junction of two major bike routes, a bus route, and is two blocks south of an elevated S-train light rail line. The park incorporates objects and outdoor furniture from many different countries, in an attempt to reflect and embrace the national diversity of the people that make use of the park. It is a bit cluttered and disorganized, like the district itself, and it well-loved by local residents and tourists alike.

The population in the 4.1 km2  of Nørrebro is 79,700 making it the most populated district in the city, with a density of 19,440 per km2 (50,350 per sq mi), which lies somewhere between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City. The old sections of the neighborhood has an urban form that it difficult to describe objectively. It feels geometric. I think it is right in the sweet spot between the buildings dominating and the open spaces dominating. There is enclosure. It feels as though the open spaces have been subtracted from the mass, rather than that the buildings have been added to a void. I haven't done any 3-D modelling for this project but these buildings make me want to. I don't know if there is any other way to capture it.

The Continent

I’m back in Copenhagen. It took about 22 hours longer than expected plus a detour to the UK to get back in. I really had no idea if I was going to be able to get back as I traveled by bus the 60 miles between the Stansted and Gatwick airports (about 12% of the whole length of England) on the outskirts of London yesterday night. I believe I am here legally and was entitled to enter, but only due to a specific Denmark-USA bilateral agreement, the nuances of which are not well known or much cared about by other countries.

London Bridge!

I was warned about and discouraged from going to Turkey at all due to the instability, terrorism and refugee influx in that country in the past few years. The only effect of these on my trip however were in the extreme security at the airport, where the airline employees were not all interested in the nuances of Danish immigration law and would not let me board the plane. I thought that it would be easier to get into Denmark from the UK and ultimately that worked out.

So! I’m back, after my three week sojourn through central Europe, to the very edge of south-eastern Europe, finally crossing over the recently renamed 15th of July Martyrs Bridge across the Bosphorous to get to an Istanbul airport on the Asian side. I crossed all over land as far as Montenegro, and in doing so performed something of a north-to-south transect of the middle portion of Europe, from the Baltic to the Adriatic. A transect is a tool used by geographers, biologists, landscape architects and urban planners to collect data and create a conceptual model of the range of environments (including urban environments).

I wasn’t rigorously collecting data on anything, but I was aware of progressive changes in language, culture, built environments, transportation systems, basic economic transactions, and certain government functions like border control; basically all the things you interact with when you are travelling. Travelling alone makes it quite a bit easier to be observant of such minutia because, you know, you don't have anyone to talk to. I compiled some maps crudely showing the changes in these qualities I experienced as I traveled in a previous post.

So I got to see a whole range of qualities that make the continent of Europe “continental”. When you are travelling you always get to see and feel what is familiar and what is different. Copenhagen is a good place to start out because it feels pretty familiar. Some combination of it being a small country, a wealthy country, a country with a near-universal level of English as a second language, and perhaps being a country that was most often an outside observer of the traumatic episodes of 20th century European history seem to make it particularly accessible to an American like me.

Travelling south much of what seemed familiar from home gradually disappeared. As I got deep into the continent the USA felt more and more distant. Germany is fascinating partly because it feels like an alternate reality version of the USA. Prague was suddenly Catholic (if only nominally) after three months in subdued and self-conscious Protestant lands. The deeper you go into Hapsburg lands (Prague, Vienna, Zagreb but not Munich) you get a new diversity of cultural influences in which German is a strong element but Italian, Slavic and other cultures are also key. In Yugoslavia you have a mess of cultures with the same background and mostly the same language, but each looking outwards towards somewhere else: Slovenia to Germany, Croatia to Italy, Serbia to Russia, Bosnia to Turkey, Kosovo to Albania, (those are gut-level generalizations, half of which are about places I haven't even been). Finally in Turkey you get the crazy mashup of the Islamic Middle East, the Roman Empire, and the medieval christian Mediterranean world. The built legacies of each of these roots mixing and overlapping while the cultural elements of the latter two are mostly gone due to 20th century nationalism and ethnic purification, some sort of which also characterized all of the other countries I passed though. Peculiarly, while this was happening I began to notice a different kind of familiarity. More and more I got flashbacks to places I’ve been in Latin America: long bus rides through rural lands and villages, the insufferable tourist economy of Santo Domingo, the glorious coast of Chile in winter, the old crumbling downtown of Asuncion, the elegant and lively but also sort of crumbling colonial quarter of Mexico City.

I can think of three main reasons for the relationship these distant places.
First: the change from upper-income economies to middle-income economies.
Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro are considered to be “Upper-Middle Income” countries. They’re pretty developed and industrialized but there is also quite a bit of informality in the way economic transactions and government interactions take place that felt similar to places in Latin America. The democratic institutions also seem to work (or not work) in a more or less similar way, the culture is a bit more conservative and religion is taken more seriously.

I really like travelling in middle-income countries. It’s easy to get around because buses go everywhere, also the buses aren't completely awful so you're comfortable enough, prices are relatively cheap so you feel rich, there’s still clear connections to past ways of doing things which is charming, there aren’t nearly as many rules so you can have more fun (just be respectful!!!) and the population is doing okay overall so you don’t have to feel like shit for being American (BUT there is still a wealth gap between tourists and locals so the tourist economy is more prominent and obnoxious.) It would be interesting to write a book about all the middle income countries. It is remarkable how similarly things work in Croatia and Mexico; even the visual appearance of these places is similar because the economies of scale, the types of materials and manufactured goods available, and the relationship between wages and materials.  

Second: the Climate. The Mediterranean climate is the most perfect for human thriving I think. It being November there was a nice crispness and coolness to the air, but the sun usually came out too and warmed things up. There are trees but not too many so you have long, unobstructed views. Fruit, wine and fish are plentiful and cheap. In the summer there is water you can jump into (I even went swimming briefly in the Adriatic Sea while in Croatia). The interiors of buildings are not so nice and there isn’t much climate control because it’s generally nicer to be outside anyhow, so you are better connected with nature in a way and feel healthier and saner overall. Specifically Croatia reminded me a lot of the middle part of Chile, which is also quite nice, though the Pacific is a bit more boisterous than the Adriatic.

Why would you be inside?

   
Third: Continentalness.
This was the thing I was thinking about when I started writing this post, and it’s really the first of these three that I started noticing. It was especially strong in Vienna, where I really felt these strong echoes from from the historic downtown cores of Asunción (Paraguay), Salta (Argentina), Santiago (Chile), and Mexico City. That’s funny because they’re sort of reverse echoes. As far as I can tell, Vienna and Paris were the two poles of a cultural sphere in continental Europe for a period of time when that culture was the most prestigious and influential in the world. I am thinking especially of the period from the 1840’s to 1914, but we could probably start counting from 1750 or earlier. Due to the result of WWI Vienna never really rose past that peak of prominence and grandeur and it was preserved in a way; unlike Paris which continued to grow and has remained one of the cultural capitals of the world.


An important practice in studying history is to isolate the situation in which the subject came into being from whatever came after. This is very true of studying urban morphology because of the permanence of elements of the built environment. What were the architectural, economic, governmental, social realities at the moment that this building was built? They are going to tell you an awful lot about why it is the way it is.

The old downtown cores of the Latin American cities I mentioned all had their heyday in that period from the mid-19th century up until the early 20th century. (Generally this was the laissez faire period in the economies of these countries which enriched the elites who lived in the capitals. Argentina went through its period of outrageous economic growth then too, while Asuncion had it’s heyday in the 1860’s before the War of the Triple Alliance when the dictator Francisco Solano Lopez was enamoured with Napoleon III’s imperial Paris.) So the most important global culture at that time was continental Europe and the elites who shaped these cities were very consciously looking abroad for cultural models that they assumed were to superior to ones indigenous to their own countries.

After war, revolution, economic stagnation and/or economic nationalization these old downtown cores declined in their practical importance and wealth but maintained a tarnished splendor and cultural cachet. The influence of 19th and early 20th century continental European was maintained in the urban culture and built environment these cities too, and in funny ways got transmitted and adapted by the national cultural of each country. The use of continental style electrical outlets and bidets in rural Paraguay is one an example of some of those minutia. There’s also the pompous historicist and neo-classical public sculptures and architecture you see in Mexico City and Santiago. And there is the global culture of the hotel, glorified in the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel which I think comes from this period too, and of which I’ve gotten to glimpse the low-budget aspirations in Asuncion, Mexico, Zagreb, and most recently Istanbul, where the concierge politely addressed me as Monsieur.