Abstract
The City of Copenhagen has, in the past fifteen years, developed urban policy with concrete targets for improving livability and has produced the “Urban Life Account” (2010 – 2019), which aims to measure and evaluate the quality of urban life in the city and the level of satisfaction with public spaces amongst its citizens [1]. This paper evaluates the scale, distribution and resulting accessibility of urban spaces and green spaces in the City of Copenhagen in the context of two main factors; first, the population growth in the last three decades and resulting densification and second, the Covid-19 pandemic, which has highlighted vulnerabilities in the urban fabric and accessibility to urban spaces. Based on an analysis of indicators of density, this study formulates policy recommendations for provision and improvement of public spaces in view of meeting the city’s targets for livability in the City of Copenhagen. The paper is based on a research collaboration between the Royal Danish Academy and the City of Copenhagen, which has provided detailed built density and geospatial socio-economic data. Through an analysis of these data sets supplemented with data on use of urban spaces and amenities collected from digital platforms, the present study reveals significant differences in access to urban spaces and green areas and an overall tendency towards centralization of certain services and amenities. The City of Copenhagen has grown with approximately 100,000 inhabitants in the last 10 years and is expected to grow by another 100,000 by 2031, which will bring the number of inhabitants to about 725,000 according to projections by the City of Copenhagen (Copenhagen Municipal Plan, 2019)[2]. At the same time, under the current COVID-19 pandemic, the use of parks has increased significantly (Google, 2021) [3]. This study further qualifies a discussion on the effect of urban density and densification and builds on previous scholarship such as Neuman (2005) [4], Hofstad (2012) [5], Peschardt, K.K., et al (2012) [6], and Haaland & van den Bosch (2015) [7]. The analysis encompasses three types of indicators of density, namely (a) urban form (average dwelling area, floor area ratio and block size, location and size of public spaces and green spaces), (b) demography (population and age group densities, amount of people cohabiting in one housing unit, average amount of rooms per household, amount of people per room per housing unit); and (c) location and intensity of economic activity (based on data obtained from Flickr, AirBnB, Google Places and Tripadvisor supported with National Business Register Data - CVR). The initial GIS-based spatial and statistical analysis has shown which neighborhoods present the lowest accessibility to urban spaces and green areas and based on those results, this study makes policy recommendations for the neighborhoods where improvement and upgrading of urban spaces and green areas should be prioritized. References: [1] Urban Life Account, 2019 (https://byudvikling.kk.dk/artikel/bylivsregnskab) [2] Copenhagen Municipal Plan, 2019 (https://kp19.kk.dk/om-kommuneplan-2019) [3] COVID-19 Community Mobility Report, Capital Region of Denmark May 27, 2021 https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2021-05-27_DK_Capital_Region_of_Denmark_Mobility_Report_en.pdf [4] Neuman, M., 2005. The compact city fallacy. J. Plann. Educ. Res. 25, 11–26. [5] Hofstad, H., 2012. Compact city development: high ideals and emerging practices.Eur. J. Spatial Dev., 1–23 [6] Peschardt, K.K., Schipperijn, J., Stigsdotter, U.K., 2012. Use of Small Public Urban Green Spaces (SPUGS). Urban For. Urban Greening 11, 235–244. [7] Haaland, C., & van den Bosch, C. K. (2015). Challenges and strategies for urban green-space planning in cities undergoing densification: A review. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 14(4), 760–771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2015.07.009
