Jan Gehl

Jan Gehl

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"First life, then spaces, then buildings--the other way around never works." - Jan Gehl

Jan Gehl is a Danish city planner. He is the founder of Gehl Architects - Urban Quality Consultants, a Copenhagen-based firm offering expertise concerning the human dimension in city and site planning." For many years, Gehl was head of the Department of Urban Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (also his alma mater). [1] He now advises cities around the world, including New York City. In 2007, in conjunction with Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious PlaNYC, the Department of Transportation retained Gehl's consulting services. [2]

THE BORDERLAND

After receiving his degree in architecture in 1960, Gehl worked as an architect in the suburbs of Copenhagen.

Around that time, Gehl married Ingrid Mundt, a psychologist. "We had many discussions about why the human side of architecture was not more carefully looked after by the architects, landscape architects, and planners. My wife and I set out to study the borderland between sociology, psychology, architecture, and planning." [3]

FIRST BOOK

Jan Gehl's first book, Life Between Buildings, was published in Danish in 1971 and translated into English in 1987. Research for the book was funded by a five-year grant from the Royal Danish Academy. As the book's title suggests, Gehl departed from architectural tradition by focusing not on buildings, but on people and their behavior. He saw city planning as a means to an end-the end being to improve the lives that city residents lead.

In Life Between Buildings, Gehl enumerates three types of outdoor activities: necessary, optional, and social. Necessary activities such as going to school or work, delivering mail, and shopping-will happen all year round, no matter what. A hostile urban environment might make a trip to the grocery store less fun, but it will not stop people from buying food.

Gehl's examples of optional activities include "taking a walk to get a breath of fresh air, standing around enjoying life, or sitting and sunbathing."

In a proposition that could perhaps be called Gehl's first law of urban planning, Gehl writes, When outdoor areas are of poor quality, only strictly necessary activities occur.

When city residents see no reason to linger outside, they will rarely engage in such activities as standing around enjoying life. Social activities or all activities that depend on the presence of others will necessarily decrease as well. [4]

MID-CAREER

As a lecturer at the Royal Danish Academy throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Jan Gehl continued to expound his people-centered architectural vision. In 1998, the Academy established a Center for Public Space Research, with Gehl as its director. [1]

At the same time, Gehl's ideas continued to have applications beyond the ivory tower. Throughout the end of the twentieth century, Gehl's home city, Copenhagen, made a series of gradual improvements in its urban life, most of them influenced by Gehl's academic findings. (Gehl's 1996 book Public Spaces, Public Life sums up the significant progress that has been made in Copenhagen since Life Between Buildings was written.) The university has provided the ideology and the data, the city has laid the stones, and we have worked together, Gehl says. [3]

GEHL ARCHITECTS

Gehl Architects Urban Quality Consultants, founded in 2001, allowed Jan Gehl and his colleagues to put their ideas into practice more directly. Much of Gehl's recent writing, therefore, has been in the form of reports tailored to the needs of particular cities.

Gehl Architects has advised cities both large and small, from Stockholm, Sweden to Melbourne, Australia to London. Gehl is currently working as a consultant for New York City.

"MESSAGE"

In 2006, Janette Sadik-Khan, an expert on transportation policy, interviewed Jan Gehl. A little more than a year later, Sadik-Khan was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Transportation, and soon Gehl was her consultant.

In that interview, Sadik-Khan asked Gehl what message he would like to convey to New York City planners. He answered that it was

"the same message I have conveyed for 40 years: that we as planners, architects, landscape architects, and traffic engineers have to serve communities to make life richer and to solve our conflicts so that people can develop their neighborhoods and their cities in dignity and move about. I have talked especially about the soft end of the moving about, which is what cities have traditionally been about. What was very important has been pushed to the side for long periods of time by the introduction of the automobile. People are starting to stand up and recognize that we have lost something which was always very important, and now we have time to recover from the first wave of automobile pressure, and can start to rethink a better balance where important things are not lost." [5]