Copenhagen offers an example of how Vancouver could plan for the future

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On a recent sunny day in downtown Vancouver, seated at a patio shaded by office towers, Martine Reinhold Kildeby, a Danish expert on green development, considers what she would change about the city.

It only takes her a moment.

“I think it’s problematic where you have areas with only working buildings, not residential. It shows how vulnerable that is when something like a pandemic hits, right? It leaves room for other problems. This has been the approach for all cities in the [United] States as well,” she says.

“I think that for cities to survive in the future, we have to think about flexibility. Don’t create anything that can’t change function.”

Her message is simple: when it comes to growth of cities, let’s stop doing it the usual way. Instead, let’s transform cities with new ways of making them sustainable – not just for the environment, but also for the social good.

Ms. Reinhold Kildeby is the head of strategic partnerships with Bloxhub, a philanthropic umbrella organization in Copenhagen that aims to create more sustainable cities worldwide. She was in Vancouver recently as part of her mission to meet with housing groups and policymakers in Canada and the U.S.

She and other members of Bloxhub believe they have some valuable lessons to share with other cities. Denmark has a global reputation for innovative design, both in furniture and architecture, and Copenhagen has the ambitious goal of becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral city in the next few years.

London’s Economist Intelligence Unit rated Copenhagen the second-most livable city, after Vienna. Vancouver ranks fifth and is the only North American city in the Top 5.

Both Vancouver and Copenhagen are constrained geographically, and both are experiencing growth, although Copenhagen’s has been more gradual. And both are seeing pressure to build more housing supply, particularly affordable housing. So far, the Danish city, at least the urban core, is denser than Vancouver, with 6,800 people per square kilometre. Vancouver has 5,492 people, according to the World Population Review.

And while Vancouver is increasingly turning to towers to achieve housing supply, Ms. Reinhold Kildeby says Copenhagen tends to limit the spread of towers, preferring to stick to lower density. But there are towers, including the wild looking Kaktus Towers, which has the outward appearance of a luxury property but is a prefabricated structure for student housing. It was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, which designed the twisted tower Vancouver House.

In order to add density to the urban centre, developers have made creative moves that include refurbishing old silos for housing, as well as a 160-year-old industrial brewery district called Carlsberg Byen. Buildings in the district were largely repurposed, including the recycling of any demolished materials that went back into the new infrastructure.

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“We promote a sense of sustainability and try not to tear things down and build new ones, because if the new ones are equally static in their function, will they be relevant in 50 years?” Ms. Reinhold Kilderby asks on a follow-up video call.

She’s been working with American cities, mostly on that idea of creating buildings that can change function now that the North American downtown cores are emptying out.

“It’s a different skyline looking at the two cities,” she says of Vancouver, “but there are principles that can be shared and learned.”

One principle is that when master planning a community, a designer or planner should start with the people, not the buildings. That’s a key shift in approach that’s been going on for several years, she says.

“Jan Gehl, the famous architect, illustrated this very clearly. He said, ‘first you have the people and then you add some outdoor squares, some space, and then you add the infrastructure and the buildings.’”

Vancouver has several major master-planned communities that will get underway in the next few years. The 500-block Broadway Plan and the long-term, encompassing Vancouver Plan are two major plans. The 35-hectare Jericho Plan is finishing the engagement process, and there’s a debate underway as to whether that plan should densify with dozens of towers for up to 24,000 residents, or stick to low-to-midrise density for up to 18,000 residents.

The 33-hectare Carlsberg district opened in 2009 and its 6.45 million square feet of space – which includes 3,100 apartments – is nearly built out. About 600 of the homes are low-cost housing. There are nine high-rises.

Architecture firm Entasis is the design studio behind the Carlsberg masterplan. In 2009, they won the award for best masterplan worldwide at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. Today. it’s widely considered a success story: a dense, urban centre with green and solar-paneled rooftops, packed with housing for students, families and professionals, with cultural events, shops, cafés, nightlife, schools, daycares, businesses, plazas, bicycle paths and a connection to rapid transit. It meets strict standards for energy efficiency.

“Copenhagen was close to bankruptcy 30 years ago, but due to politics, including clever city development, the city now shows itself as one of the most desirable capitals on Earth,” architect Christian Cold, owner of Entasis, writes in an e-mail exchange. “A lot of people look for a place to work and live in this small democratic paradise.”

He recalls that famous Japanese architect Kengo Kuma visited Copenhagen and noted that other cities seemed to be a party for a few people, while the majority struggled.

“However, in Copenhagen it seemed that the party was for everyone – the rich, the not so rich, the poor. Copenhagen is a success, and people are in general invited to enjoy,” Mr. Cold says. “It’s important to understand that our point in developing Carlsberg had been born out of this fact and had contributed to create this unique situation. We can share this knowledge with other cities.”

Another key principle: significant density adds vibrancy when it is successful. He believes high-rises can succeed, if designed thoughtfully, and within context.

“Real cities are intense. If not, you will not feel the drama of being you in a city,” he says.

He sticks to some design principles for city building. Ideally, streets shouldn’t be more than 12 metres wide, so people can make eye contact, he says. And facades of buildings should be no more than 20 meters wide, to diminish shadowing.

High-rises can succeed with ambitious design, but “you have to reinvent the symbolic value” of them, he says.

Every city has its critical mass, he says, where the majority of its residents lives and work and go to school, he says. The critical mass depends on the cultural heritage of the city and differs from city to city. In Copenhagen, most buildings are five storeys, for example. In Vancouver, the city is mostly low and midrise density, with towers packing the downtown peninsula. Over the decades, zoning had limited denser housing forms in much of the city, but that’s slowly changing.

He suggests that planners “hold onto what is known in the city where you develop, as new development demands so much from the people living there. They have to feel at home by recognizing an urban fabric they are familiar with.”

People need plazas and gardens, places to meet each other – the life between the blocks of housing.

Carlsberg Byen chief executive officer Jens Nyhus said in a New York Times interview a few years ago that, “one can build anywhere but there is an extreme challenge in getting life between the buildings.”

Mr. Cold agrees. That’s why towers must be considered carefully, so that they open up to the public at the ground level, and not create a barrier to interaction. He says they must be respectful of human needs.“The high-rises should be as pins on a map, pointing out where the most important urban venues and spaces are situated,” he says. “Meaning that even the high-rises are supporting the spaces, and not vice versa.”

There is a lot at stake in creating dense city spaces, he says. If done poorly, he says, without the right ambition and knowledge, they can turn into a “catastrophe.” The design and planning for high-rises is particularly important.

“We often refer to a game of chess,” he says. “You have the pawns, and a lot of them, and then you have the queen and king standing tall. The high-rises are the queen and king. They are important and as such the people, companies, money, politicians behind these buildings should … do their utmost best, as they stand tall in the public space.”

He continues: “If they do not succeed in contributing to the picture as a whole – if they create a gated community for the few with a fortune – they fail. If the architecture is not from the highest level, they will fail. And we will all pay.”