Copenhagen’s Urban Development is Just Old Wine in New Bottles
This is a time and an age where we are thinking differently about our cities for the first time in a century. Copenhagen is often revered as a benchmark city but hapless politicians with a shocking lack of modern vision merely dazzle with smoke and mirrors. City Hall continues to dust off urban development ideas that date from the 1950’s and 1960’s. It’s all just old car-centric wine in new bottles and none of it tastes good. Don’t believe the hype.
The political party that has controlled Copenhagen for well over a century — the Social-Democrats — have an dark, awkward history of urban development visions and the current Lord Mayor Frank Jensen is seemingly intent on continuing that tradition.
The political dream of a tunnel under the harbour goes way back. To 1910, actually. The Social-Democrats had a vision of tearing down Nyhavn — now the picture-postcard canal in the heart of the city, but there were plans to tear it down and build a tunnel to the other side.
The primary anchor of many of the proposals, past and present, seems to be a tunnel under the harbour. There is a bizarre obsession with completing the Ring 2…
