03/08/2020
* * * * THE WALKING CITY * * * *
Pioneering Danish urbanist and city architect Jan Gehl (JG) talks to RocaGallery.com (RG)) about prioritising cities for people and ease of mobility
- Source; http://www.rocagallery.com/the-walking-city
Jan Gehl is a city architect that has helped transform places like Copenhagen and Melbourne into some of the world’s most liveable cities and written seminal books such as Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (1972) and Cities for People (2011) that explore the need for making people-oriented cities.
RG:
(RG) You have written at length about how modernism wasn’t about making cities for people but cities that looked good from above. Can you elaborate?
(JG). Until modernism, cities were built around spaces where people moved around and held markets, which were also spaces that linked various parts of the city together. If you think of the older cities you know, people often don’t remember buildings but the main squares or the important public spaces.
What happened with the modernists was that the focus was completely shifted away from spaces to objects, to buildings. So instead of making spaces with buildings around them, they started to make buildings with no man’s land around them, what I call leftover space. That was a massive change in the way cities were built. The new spaces were often too big, too wide, too windswept and not attractive in any way.
(RG) As a city architect, you have written a lot about the need to study people and how they behave. Many cities have traffic departments but still don’t invest the same sort of money and expertise in studying people. Is that something that you think has changed?
(JG) Oh yes. Motorcars have been a major focus historically because they create accidents. And because there is a lot of money involved in the motorcar industry. But increasingly it has been recognised that if you document something you care about it more. When you know something about how your city is used by its citizens, then that becomes part of what you look at when making policy.
(RG) What are some interesting examples of places that have become better for people in terms of walking and experiencing the city? Of course one of the cities that has been on this bandwagon for the longest time is . . . .. .. ..
* Interview text and images continue here - http://www.rocagallery.com/the-walking-city
JG: CLOSING WORDS:
"But in the end it all comes down to mindset. We have to change the mindset of planners, city architects, and engineers so that instead of going for technocratic, ‘smart’ and technical solutions, they take the well-being of people as their point of departure."
Image: Portrait of Jane Gehl by Sandra Henningsson. © Gehl Architects
