Re-Gehl: Architect Jan Gehl's talk in Budapest, part II

Last week at the Toldi Mozi, I had the privilege to hear a presentation by Jan Gehl, the Danish architect and leading light behind the livable-cities movement and the worldwide utility cycling explosion. I posted about it here, but there were a enough remaining notes to do a continuation. Here's the rest of what he said.

And, of course, Gehl’s home town of Copenhagen has also provided him with loads of inspiration on urban design, most notably from the Strøget, the city’s central high street that was made car free in 1962. Very controversial at the time, the project became a huge success, and Gehl’s reports and research on it helped fuel the city’s now famous approach to bike- and pedestrian-friendly city design.

Although now known as a masterstroke of socially conscious planning, Gehl pointed out that the Strøget project was at first seen as a commercial venture. It was modeled on a successful shopping street in Kiel, Germany. “Shopping was the impetus,” he said. “But we found that it stimulated other things, as well: meetings and conversations and play – along with a little bit of shopping.”

Disneyland and resort hotels are excellent examples of urban design. They pay attention to the details. If they don't, people won't come." -- Jan Gehl.

A big lesson here seemed to be that if a northern city like Copenhagen could adapt Mediterranean street life, anybody could. “I see these bicycles coming up in many unexpected places,” Gehl noted. His firm was recently tasked with designing cycling systems in places as different as Greenland and Singapore. Presumably, Greenland’s weather is the least of its challenges. But in Singapore, 35-degree average temperatures and constant high humidity don’t make it an obvious choice for a big cycling network. But to Gehl’s thinking, cars make less sense given that the island is just 50 km long, 26 km wide and home to 5.4 million people. “Imagine, you’re in a big Mercedes. As soon as you get it up to full speed, you run into the water!” Gehl’s prescription for Singapore is a dense public transport network and ample bikeways with protection from the sun and rain. Because of the island’s high density, average bike trips will be just 2 kilometres, which is practical even in a tropical climate, Gehl said.

Although Gehl’s been happy to share his ideas with people, not everyone takes them up. He did a consultancy with the City of London several years ago in which he offered a design for a comprehensive cycling network. Today, they’re “still talking about it in committee meetings,” Gehl sniffed.

In New York, by contrast, many of his ideas were taken up and implemented with impressive speed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “He wanted to build a thousand miles of bike lanes in four years, before his term would end.” (Bloomberg succeeded in building approximately 400 miles of bikeways, still far more than Copenhagen has.) A big difference, of course, is the power that the mayor has in New York's city charter. For an even more extreme example of a “doer” type of city, Gehl gave the example of Moscow. Gehl gave a consultancy there, and: “I come back a year later and – whoops! – in a huge parking lot, no more parked cars – and in another place – whoops! – a bunch of park benches. Instant livable city! That's a very efficient democracy!"

Gehl was joking, of course. But he firmly believes that, whatever might be said about the process, those particular changes in Moscow were big improvements to city life.

Gehl observed that cities achieve such transformations in different ways. Sometimes it's from a visionary leader (The mayoral double act of Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa in Bogota is a famous examples) and sometimes it's from the ground up, as a popular movement (I'd say Budapest's Critical Mass is a good example here). And sometimes "it's a mix”. The technical challenges aren’t the big ones, though. “People have to have a change of heart,” Gehl said.

Once that happens, Gehl recommends following a couple of real-life examples accessible to anyone: “Disneyland and resort hotels." This sounds like another of Gehl's punchlines. But as with the others, he also has a serious point.

“These places are very careful in the details and the scaling of things to attract people,” Gehl said. “They have to be. If they don’t pay attention to the details, people won’t come.”

Out with modernists and motorists, in with walkers and bikers

The other night at the Toldi Mozi (September 17), I had the privilege to hear a presentation by Jan Gehl, the Danish architect and leading light behind the livable-cities movement and the worldwide utility cycling explosion. He was in town for the recent publication of the Hungarian edition of his book, Cities for People (Hungarian title is Élhető városok which translates as “Livable Cities”. Parenthetical within parenthetical: Why is it that Hungarian translators take such liberties with titles??). At the start of his talk, Gehl told the 200 or so of us in the cinema’s big auditorium that he’d prepared a 1.5 hour Powerpoint lecture. However, he said he’d forego that because he’d given the same talk last September to what was probably the same crowd. Even though I’d missed his last appearance, I was very happy to skip the ppt and enjoy a free-wheeling Q and A with two Hungarian moderators (editors who’d worked on the Hungarian edition of the book).

At the outset, Gehl noted that this was his second big book on the subject of people-friendly urban design. The first was Life Between Buildings, published in 1971 and a touchstone text in contemporary urban planning. The most frequent question Gehl gets about Cities for People is, What’s the difference between the new book and the old one? “The answer,” Gehl said, “is 40 years.” That is, 40 years of not just research but actual implementation of his ideas in cities the world over, from New York to London to Shanghai.

"We wanted to go someplace where we could watch people. We didn't think we could do that in Denmark." -- Jan Gehl, on his early research trip to Venice

Cities for People is now out in 25 languages, which gratifies Gehl. “It’s so wonderful that this book is available all over the world in all these funny languages.” Gehl paused for a beat, as the crowd had a self-deprecating chuckle. Then he interjected: “I’m not talking about Hungarian. I’m talking about French!” This elicited a bigger, gleeful burst of laughter.

Gehl’s first book, despite its huge influence in many corners of the world, was not published in French until recently. And Gehl noted with some disparagement that the new French edition of Cities for People was published not in Paris but in Quebec. His fans in France have to import the book from Canada. “The French think of themselves as culturally self-sufficient,” Gehl said, over the crowd’s continued laughter.

With the book plug done, Gehl retold his famous personal origin myth: how as a university student, he was indoctrinated in the modernist school of architecture, which instructed that students should forget about designing cities and focus instead on buildings. Make things that look grand from a distance, don’t worry so much about the details. Gehl’s perspective changed dramatically after he finished school and married a psychologist. Gehl said his wife told him, “You learn so much about form and aesthetics and you know this much about people!” Gehl held up his hand, showing a quarter-inch between thumb and forefinger.

Another important influence in his early professional life was Jane Jacobs, writer of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). Gehl described her as the “great grandmother” of people-friendly city design. “She said if you let modernists and motorists have their way, the great American city will be dead,” Gehl said.

It’s not a coincidence that the two most influential people during Gehl’s formative years as an urban design thinker were women. These days, Gehl presides over the prestigious firm Gehl Architects, with a stable of more than 50 consultants, many of them architects, but also including anthropologists and maybe even psychologists (Gehl admitted he wasn't sure if he had psychologist on staff -- but he said he worked with a multi-disciplinary group of people, which he says is important in his line of work). “You should come to my office in Copenhagen some time,” he joked to his young male interviewers. “Nothing but young women as far as the eye can see.” Gehl was being playful, but there’s a professional reason behind the feminine tilt, he said. “The girls in architecture school are interested in improving society, while the boys are more interested in building big steel towers.” 

Gehl said the best contemporary examples of cities designed for people are the Medieval centres of many European cities. His favourite is Venice, where he performed some of his seminal research on human behavior in cities many years ago during a six-month stay with his wife. “We wanted to go somewhere where we could watch people,” Gehl said. “We didn’t think we could do that in Denmark.” Another good laugh line -- even though Danish cities are no longer so devoid of people -- thanks in no small measure to Gehl's influence.

“Venice is a people city, designed for people, and it still works that way,” Gehl said. “Around every corner, you meet a friend and, of course, you have to talk a little. There are conversations going on all around you.”

The favelas of Sao Paulo, Brazil, are also examples of people places – in contrast to the urban centre of Sao Paolo. “The favelas were designed for people,” Gehl said.

My next post will cover the rest of Jan Gehl's September 17th talk at the Toldi Mozi.

Coping with Copenhagen

As soon as I glimpsed the headlines on the latest eruptions of the -- cut, paste -- Eyjafjallajokul volcano, the nightmares came flooding back. Just two weeks ago, clouds of ash from the same Icelandic vent had caught me in their callous grip -- and held me hostage for three horrifying days in -- shrill, staccato notes from Hitchcock's Psycho -- Scandinavia!!

As I indicated in my last post on the subject, I was on business in Malmö, Sweden, and got stuck there due to ash-induced air space closures. The degradations I endured in this barbaric northern outpost are difficult to recount. But for posterity's sake, I'll soldier on.

After spending an unplanned Saturday in Malmö frolicking around on a rented bike, I returned and monitored CNN and the Internet for news of the eruption. The vent would not relent! So on Sunday, I took the 20 minute train ride from Malmö under the Sound to Copenhagen, with plans to take a similar bike ride there.

I don't know why, but I was caught off guard by how quiet Copenhagen was on a Sunday. I'm familiar with the complete absence of Sunday commerce in Vienna, but somehow I thought Copenhagen, being in a country with the third largest population of atheists in the world, would take a less solemn view of the Lord's Day.

But my intuition was wrong. I arrived at Copenhagen Central Station around noon and followed the signs to a large bicycle rental on premises. An attendant was on hand but when I inquired about bikes, he said they were closing in 30 minutes. I asked about other possibilities for hiring a bike and he suggested I go to the Tourist Information Centre across the street. I did but it was closed for Sunday.

I had the addresses of a couple Copenhagen bike shops scribbled down, but judging from the virtual absence of downtown business activity, I decided these would probably be useless. My only hope was one of Copenhagen's public bicycles. When I mention "public bicycles" in my blog, I usually follow with the appositive "like the Vélib bikes in Paris". But Copenhagen's bikes are not like the ones in Paris. Rather, they are old, old-school bikes that run on a simple technology from the days before swipe cards were invented.

The way it works is that there are bikes chained to docking stations at various points in the city. You take a 20-kroner coin, insert it into a slot on the handle bars, thereby releasing the chain from the bike. It works exactly like a shopping trolley. When you're finished, you return the bike to a station, re-insert chain, and your 20-kroner coin pops back out. Brain-dead simple, no subscription fee, no procedure, no nothing. Only problem is, there are hardly any of these bikes anywhere. Reportedly, there are around 1,200 bikes in the system, but during my day riding all over Copenhagen, I saw about 6-7 public bikes. I have to assume a good many of them have disappeared into people's garages. A 20-kroner coin isn't much collateral to discourage theft.

That said, I DID spot a public bike in the vicinity of Central Station, and this was my salvation. I dropped into a convenience store, bought a lunch of pigs in a blanket and beer, and asked the cashier to give me some 20-kroner coins with the change. Bingo! I was on my way, and practically exultant that I'd managed to achieve my goal of riding a bike in Copenhagen despite the rigor mortis of the Sunday business culture.

The bike was heavy, a bit wobbly and had only one speed. In addition, it had hard, solid-rubber tires -- like the tires on a shopping trolley, come to think of it. It did not go fast, or maybe I did not go fast. As I peddled furiously down Copenhagen's wide bike lanes, I kept getting overtaken by women in high-heeled boots, often as they casually chirped away or tapped out text messages on mobile phones. I have to believe it was the bike.

Concerning the nattily dressed female cyclists, I was struck by just how commonplace they were. Most readers will probably be aware of the Copenhagen Cycle Chic, a blog focusing on photos of nattily dressed female cyclists in Copenhagen. These sorts of bike riders are not common in Budapest, but in Copenhagen, they're everywhere. Like pigeons in St. Mark's Square although more pleasant. But the guy who does that blog -- it can't be hard work. At least the picture-taking part. Especially with the quality of that northern light. It's a fantastic city for outdoor photography. Unfortunately, my camera was out of batteries.

So much has been written about Copenhagen's brilliant cycling scene that I balked at adding more. But one thing stuck me that I just can't get over. I remember experiencing the same in Amsterdam, but it's so counter to my day-to-day experience here in Budapest that I all but forgot it by the time I visited Copenhagen. It's the habit of car drivers who, when preparing to make a right turn, will stop and look to their right to make sure they're not cutting off cyclists riding along the curb.

When I first saw a car ahead of me signal to turn right, I slowed down and prepared for it to cut in front of me. But it didn't. It waited for me to pass. During the whole day of riding, not a single motorist cut me off with a right turn. It seemed weird at first, but after awhile, I adjusted to this deferential habit of Copenhagen drivers and I kept my momentum right through every intersection, despite motorists hanging fire off to the left with their right turn signals blinking. As a cyclist who at least once a week dodges a "right hook," this experience in Copenhagen left me thinking, "Now this is civilisation."

Copenhagen Cycling Sheiks

Like a heedless cabal of eco-warrior chieftains, local authorities in Copenhagen are turning car lanes to bike lanes all over the city -- sometimes in the middle of the night when no one's looking.

A Danish acquaintance who lived a few years in Budapest and returned to Copenhagen this last year, writes:

Attached is from our hood this morning, without debate or warning they just steal (another) 90 centimeters from the cars and give them to the cycles.
Goddamn eco-freaks!

Although it sounds like he's taking it with a sense of humour, there's unmistakable vitriol there. I can only guess that his Budapest years left him with an exaggerated sense of car-owner's entitlement (virtually free street parking for all home owners, thank you Mr. Demszky!). And now that he's back in a city with sensible transport policies, he's suffering from reverse culture shock.

Marooned in Malmö

The eruptions of the Icelandic volcano known as -- cut, paste: Eyjafjallajokull -- caused a good deal of misery throughout Europe and beyond, but I can't count myself as one of the most hard-hit victims. Last week I was on a work trip when the fireworks began. But while other travelers languished in airports and train stations with nothing but cups of Nescafe and CNN to while the hours away, I was peddling around in cycling nirvana.

My work trip was in Malmö, Sweden, a former industrial port that's refashioned itself as an intellectual centre and forerunner in urban sustainability. Cycling has a 24% modal share there (Wikipedia, 2004), one of the highest in Europe, so when our return flights to Budapest were canceled for a second time on Saturday, I rented a bike from my hotel for about EUR 10, and checked it out.

One thing they do in Malmö is separate infrastructure -- similar to what I saw in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Berlin. On streets that were wide enough, including major thoroughfares, separate, wide bike paths are provided between the sidewalks and carriageways. Where there's street parking, the cars are lined up on the curb with a metre-wide buffer between cars and bike path. That keeps the cyclists out of reach of opening car doors. I didn't get a photo illustrating this, but I got one of separate infrastructure on a bridge across a canal.

There's an impressive floating bike park on the canal between Malmö's Old Town (Gamla Staden) and the central rail station (Photo taken from Photomath? at flickr.com).

On a few stretches outside the centre, I encountered streets without separate infrastructure, where you had to ride unprotected down the side of the road (as below). These streets were an exception, though.

Aside from the great infrastructure, there are some beautiful seaside vistas to take in. On a bridge crossing into the new city extension, the Western Harbour, there was this scene:

Then there's this bicycle counter along a bike highway near Malmö Town Hall (Stadshuset). It apparently starts from zero every morning. On the Saturday that I took my big ride around town, it was about 3 or 4 p.m. and I was rider number 3,050. Then I turned around and became rider 3,052, as well.

As a longtime Budapester, I have a hard to sympathising with this -- but in some places Malmö has the problem of too many bikes. In a part of Old Town that's reserved for pedestrian traffic, city authorities are trying to bring some order to bike parking. Most people put their bikes in racks, or near racks, but sometimes they overflow and get in the way and create what some people perceive as an eyesore. As our guide, an officer for Malmö City Hall's transport department explained, "We Swedes like our order." In the near future, the city may restrict bike parking in pedestrian zones.

Malmö is a city of about 300,000 people, so it doesn't have as large a population as Budapest's, or the same level of traffic or space restrictions. Nevertheless, it's inspiring how aggressively and effectively they've dealt with the transport problems they do have. Years ago, they headed off congestion as countless other cities have -- by building a ring road. When that filled up, they built a second ring road. Now Malmö's trying a different tack: rather than making more space for cars, it's making more alternatives to them. Among other things, Malmö is reintroducing trams to its public transport network. And it's following the example of its Danish neighbour across the water, Copenhagen, by finding ways to get even more people onto bikes.

I'll try to write something about my side journey to Copenhagen soon.