City life – Dagsavisen
The dense, close city is ideal. People talk about the proximity city as a goal for future urban development, where it is a short way to everything you need. For jobs, school, trade and leisure activities, and where social life can be lived. A lively and attractive of with people in the streets, in places and sidewalk cafes, ground floors with outward-looking activities and offers, and offices and homes on the floors above. All everyday chores must be easily accessible in 10 minutes, completely without using a car.
“Death and Life of the Great American Cities” written by urban planner and activist Jane Jacobs, is considered one of the most influential books on urban planning in modern times. It was published as early as 1961, but it is still just as relevant.
Foresighted Jacobs criticized how modernist planning which put the car and the highways above all ruined for the establishment of life, commerce and neighborhoods in the United States. But the book also points out how to make the city vibrant, attractive and human-friendly places to live and work.
[ Pernille Kolstad Heen: Fredrikstad trenger en arkitekturstrategi ]
The Danish architect Jan Gehl builds on the tradition of building and developing cities that put the inhabitants first. One of Gehl’s basic ideas is that the city must plan around people, not around cars. Growing cities and places that should attract people must be interesting for those who live there, give them experiences and facilitate business and trade. The research Gehl has done shows that cities that have people in focus are also more environmentally friendly and health-promoting. Book «Life between the houses» from 1971 has become a classic, and the sequel “Cities for people” (2010) is a summary of the documentation Gehl and his colleagues have found through thorough urban space surveys and research on urban life over 40 years. It shows how to get good planning life, urban space and houses. In that order.
Where Danes are based on life, people and urban space first, we Norwegians all too often go straight to planning for the house. Here we still have a lot to learn.
The book provides insight into a significant difference in how to plan cities and places in Denmark and Norway. Where Danes are based on life, people and urban space first, we Norwegians all too often go straight to planning for the house. Here we still have a lot to learn. The care of those who have to walk or cycle past, use the gate or the space outside the building has a greater focus in our neighboring country. The Danish users actively offer to give the inhabitants good meeting places for a social life, and encourage physical activity by prioritizing soft road users over the car. The bicycle hose in Copenhagen, a bicycle bridge raised above the city’s traffic, is a good example of this.
Fortunately, progress is also being made in Norway, and we are inspired by good role models. Oslo’s new street standard was adopted in 2020, and recently won the Landscape Architecture Award 2021.
The new standard for streets in Oslo is unique in the Norwegian context. Among other things, it requires the city to have blue-green areas – ie vegetation and water elements that provide surface water management, and space for soft qualities in the cityscape at the expense of cars and hard, gray surfaces.
Squares and places that were previously car parks have in recent years taken back their original function as social meeting places. The cars have moved into the car park, several of us are walking and cycling. The grip has given increased city life to the streets.
«Oslo’s new street standard is a revolution! It is the first leading public guide to urban spaces and streets that shows a clear break with a 70-year-old tradition of prioritizing cars. It gives an opening for everyone else to do the same » writes the jury. In the recent past, the car’s main character was also in Fredrikstad. But squares and places that were formerly car parks have in recent years taken back their original function as social meeting places. The cars have moved into the car park, several of us are walking and cycling. The move has given increased city life to the streets, bathing children on Stortorget, concerts on Dampskipsbrygga and students sunbathing on Blomstertorget. We do not go further than to the neighboring town of Halden to experience that it continues to be protested loudly when it is proposed to turn the square into a square, and remove the parking spaces. Now before Christmas, the Christmas tree is decorated and tented, but well sandwiched between parked cars. Good framework for human life must always be an architect and of the developer’s most important task. When we finish our work, people should have gotten better. We got lost once after the war, when the car became public property, the roads were moving forward and the trade was moved to large shopping malls on lands outside the cities. City life faltered. Now we have found back again, experience-based research about the city has given us new course. The measures that have been taken in the center of Fredrikstad in recent years to prioritize residents and soft road users are good steps in the right direction. City life is back in the streets.
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