Atlas of the Copenhagens

Atlas of the Copenhagens (PURE; KADK) was published by Berlin-based Ruby Press in 2018. A “critical examination of the city’s status as a revered object of sustainability and liveability discourse”, the book engages in depth with two related concepts: what constitutes the ‘city’, and what constitutes ‘sustainable’ urbanism.

Copenhagen, and Denmark, frequently ride high in livability and happiness polls. This is tackled head-on in an opening quote from Jens Kvorning (Lowenstein 2009):

I call Copenhagen a Jekyll and Hyde town…on the one hand you have a dense inner city and the phenomenon of Copenhagen as a cycle city. On the other hand there are the postwar suburban districts. There, distances are too great for cycling and people simply use their cars.

Perhaps not so sustainable then, with the ‘phenomenon of Copenhagen’ less of a thing for those outside the central districts, seemingly invisible to the compilers of rankings. I’m to be found in Daily Mash corner (Towns with best ‘quality of life’ all sound shit), mouth agape at each new ranking. Rather more in-depth comment can be found in the Gdn (rankings reward the safe and the clean), from RMIT’s Brendan Barrett (rankings for expats) and via Slate (rankings hinge on homogeneity).

Thankfully, the Atlas sets out to “expand a range of territorial understandings of Copenhagen”, going beyond municipal boundaries to encompass Greater Copenhagen, the Capital Region, the Metropolitan Region and even the Øresund Region (both sides of The Bridge), presenting a rather more nuanced picture as a result. See Jacob (2014): “Cities that score well barely quality as cities, blessed with attributes of small scale, wealth and stable populations.”

The Atlas won the 2018 Lille Arne, an Arkitektforeningen award named after Danish starchitect Arne Jacobsen, for its critical approach to research, alongside Hjem-Bebyggelser-By: Bolig og velfærd i København, an examination of the Copenhagen housing market (increasingly a less than pretty sight, as it goes). The nomination recognised the in-depth contributions to debate offered by the two books, as well as their “smukt formidlede analyser” (see Ruby Press for several spreads; design is Top Trumps in Denmark),

Clearly a go-to source for pithy quotes, easy on the eye data visualisations and general debunking, the Atlas has the feel of a textbook about it. As the output of an ongoing research-based teaching project at KADK this is not altogether surprising, however the result fails to uncover the stories of the city or to bring it to life. and at €44 the book is unlikely to engage the general reader wanting to go beyond the stereotypes. The issues the Atlas raises are unlikely to reach beyond professional circles, and as a result the answer to the Copenhagen question still lies elsewhere.

Updates…17 April: see also Arkitektforeningen’s Kritisk by/Critical city (Byrum & Information)…5 July: coming in August, Kapitalen: København under forvandling (from the team behind Generøs By; suspect will not be knivskarp in its critique, or? MagKBH) …”Cities can’t be ranked by homeliness or by the thrill we experience when viewing the sparkling nightscape from a rooftop” (The Conversation; another)…København har brug for mere kaos! (a different angle)…