(Copenhagen) Oh no! Not another one who will sing the praises of Denmark! Don’t worry, I won’t tell you that Copenhagen is a perfect city or that the Danes have understood everything, I promise.
But… let me tell you about the good ideas I observed there.
Over the next few decades, Montreal will need to develop the former site of the Blue Bonnets racetrack, a “city within a city” on a 43-hectare site (a little more than half of Maisonneuve Park), separated from Namur station by the Décarie Expressway. Further south, the Bridge-Bonaventure sector will need to be reinvented, a neighbourhood with a rich industrial past wedged between Pointe-Saint-Charles and Old Montreal, at the exit of the Victoria Bridge.
In both cases, it is a unique opportunity to do things right. To design exemplary neighborhoods, designed with mobility, climate change, and above all, the people who will live there in mind.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY COBE
Copenhagen from the sky
A human-centered approach
“We attract the life we invite,” says Helle Søholt., big boss and co-founder of the Gehl firm, known for placing people at the heart of its work. The name is well known in Montreal. It is to its founder, Jan Gehl, that we owe, among other things, the inspiration for the pedestrianization of our streets and the development of our bike paths.
Gehl’s approach is simple: a neighborhood is not thought of within the four walls of a real estate developer’s office, but rather on the ground, by talking to people and listening to their needs.
It is this philosophy that inspires Copenhagen, where there is real expertise in the art of imagining and redeveloping neighborhoods. “In the 1990s, no one wanted to live here,” says Lærke Helmer, an architecture student and guide at the Danish Architecture Center. The story is familiar: the Danish capital, a Nordic port city with little interest, took advantage of the economic crisis that hit it hard to reclaim its riverfront and reinvent itself. “It’s like we’ve turned the city upside down,” Deane Simpson, a professor at the Institute of Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape at the Royal Danish Academy, tells me. “Before, we turned our backs on the water.”
A developing archipelago
Of the many buzzing neighborhoods, Nordhavn is by far the one that attracts the most international attention. This up-and-coming neighborhood has integrated water into its identity. Located in the north of the city, on the site of the former industrial harbor, it began to emerge in the late 2000s. Its development is managed by By & Havn (City and Harbor), a privately managed public company majority-owned by the City of Copenhagen.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY COBE
The former industrial port has been transformed into a district. Nordhavn is expected to accommodate 40,000 people when it is completed.
The master plan for this archipelago, designed by the firm COBE, provides that the district will eventually accommodate 40,000 inhabitants… and 40,000 workers.
“The idea at Nordhavn is to live close to the water and close to your workplace,” explains Thomas Krarup, partner and design director at COBE, who welcomes me into the firm’s spacious offices.
Even though cars are not banned, people must be within a five-minute walk of a bike or subway.
Thomas Krarup, Partner and Design Director at architectural firm COBE
Nordhavn has two metro stations, but if you’re in less of a hurry, you can get there by Havnebussernean electric water bus that runs along Copenhagen’s main canal.
PHOTO NATHALIE COLLARD, THE PRESS
THE Havnebussernean electric water bus that travels from north to south for the price of a metro ticket
Every detail counts
Unlike some painful Montreal experiences (think Griffintown!), Nordhavn is developing in an orderly and VERY controlled manner, one block at a time. COBE architects planned everything, including heights, passages, building cladding materials, colours, etc.
The result is successful: in Nordhavn, you will find buildings with breathtaking architecture that harmoniously sit alongside more classic condo complexes. On foot, you go from one condo complex to another via flowery passages and small bridges. Each time, you discover a different environment, a new point of view on the water.
To finance the two metro stations, the company By & Havn captured the land value gains from nearby condos. It must be said that unlike in our country, we don’t hesitate to tax in Denmark: the government has even just adopted a new tax on cow farts (or, if you prefer, a tax on CO emissions2 breeding)!
“The sale price of condos that are 50 metres or less from a station is higher, and this will be the case for the next 60 years,” Thomas Krarup of COBE explains to me.
The downside: Nordhavn is considered one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Denmark.
On the other hand, the supply of affordable housing in Denmark is much greater than in our country.
Another unique feature of Nordhavn: the contract for the sale of land to developers stipulates that By & Havn buys the commercial spaces on the ground floor of buildings on certain key streets. The goal: to choose businesses that will create a real neighborhood life. “This selection avoids ending up with a lot of big-box grocery stores and pharmacies,” James Thoen, a Canadian originally from Toronto and a project manager at Gehl, explains to me. “We can invite a bakery, a bookstore, a toy store… It’s this variety of businesses that creates dynamism in a neighborhood.”
COBE has planned a master plan that is flexible enough to adapt the future blocks to the economic and social changes of the coming years. Nordhavn is expected to be completed by 2050.
Transforming our cities
Like Copenhagen, many cities around the world have found ways to create new, welcoming and vibrant neighborhoods. Have you visited any of these neighborhoods that Montreal and other cities in Quebec could learn from? Write to us to describe them, we want to know about them. Some of your contributions could be published.
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