Urban Spaces

Public spaces fulfill a variety of services in cities. The idea of having green spaces in urban locations has been a reoccurring theme all throughout history. For example, the ancient Egyptians made use of domestic gardens, the Assyrians made hunting parks, and the Greeks used public gardens. For years, however, green spaces were for the wealthy and the religious. During the Italian Renaissance, parks became larger and grander. Versailles became the biggest, grandest, and most expensive park in the world in 1664. Parks served the purpose of royals and other wealthy and powerful individuals to show off their power. The park’s grand architecture and strict rules were meant to teach the working class how to be less plebeian. It was after industrialization began that the need for public spaces for inner city residents became recognized as an important part of urban society. Due to pollution, poor sewage, and overcrowding, it became clear that parks would help clean the air, improve health and prevent the spreading of diseases, and would therefore cure social ills. Today, parks’ positive effects on ecological issues, social benefits, and economic benefits are all reasons for the creation of urban spaces. Municipalities now know that parks can prevent health problems, increase worker productivity, increase tourism, increase real estate prices, lessen infrastructure damage from floods, cool heat islands, and therefore save the city governments large millions of dollars. In addition to their money saving abilities, the presence of commercial activity within parks can be a net revenue earner. As a result, cities have large incentives to create parks. 

 

Botanical Garden

Amaliehaven

Kastellet

In Copenhagen, in particular, parks have served these services and more. As the city expanded in the 1850s, the city spread outside of the city walls. As a result, the city’s fortifications served little purpose anymore. Henrik August Flindt argued that these fortifications become parks. Since then, the Botanical Garden, Ørstedsparken, Amalliehaven, and Kastellet, all former fortifications and bastions, have become public parks. All of these parks serve the purpose of providing the public with a refuge from urban life, allowing them to walk, bike, and relax among nature. Now, the city of Copenhagen plans to give all citizens access to a park within 15 minutes. Controlling urban development, building urban parks, and maintaining green plots allow for the creation of a sustainable and modern city, maintaining and promoting the brand that Copenhagen has created for itself. Parks also create a resilient urban environment for global warming, which protects the city’s economic interests. Today, many cities are following this model of creating a sustainable city, as this is necessary for prosperity in the future.

Trip to the Past

Along the highway to Lejre, once we left Copenhagen proper, vast fields of yellow canola flowers could be seen everywhere. This clearly showed the agricultural heritage of Denmark, since a large portion of the nation is still agricultural land. In fact, the nation only started modernizing in the 1970s, and as the population shifted from rural to urban as technology boomed. Now, Denmark is known as an extremely advanced nation, and even has the fastest internet connection speeds in the world! Most of the Jutland peninsula is still agricultural, along with most of the other hundreds of islands, and while the island of Seeland houses Copenhagen, which contains 87% of the nation's population, it is still mostly rural. Natural forces and human intervention has created the Denmark that we know today, and going to Lejre allowed us to see just this.

Lejre houses the Land of Legends (or Sagnlandet Lejre), an open air archeological museum, and used to be the capital of Iron Age Denmark. The site is one of few places in Denmark that contains untouched land, meaning that there are plenty of artifacts and archeological finds to be seen from previous eras. Going through the park, we can see the effects that the geography and climate of Denmark had on its people's mentality and actions, and vice versa. As the climate warmed after the ice age, nomadic people arrived in Denmark, relying on hunting and gathering as their source of survival. As the climate warmed, so did the ecosystems. Trees and other fauna from southern climates appeared in the area, and oysters and other sea organisms became prominent sources of food. As the climate cooled again, the ecosystem became greener and bushier, and at the same time, oysters began to disappear. The Danes, therefore, managed to change their ways once again and began to rely on subsistence farming. Although farming was a much more tedious task, they did what needed to be done. As the land changed throughout the years, Danes were able to consistently adapt to their environments to meet their needs of food and security.

Just as nature affected humans, humans affected the land that they lived on. First, after the agricultural revolution, and during the Iron and Bronze Ages, humans began to own property. Prior to that, since they had relied on hunting and gathering, there was no need for property. The privatization of property, and the planting of large fields of crops, resulted in deforestation. This deforestation, as a result, caused a rapid dwindling of forests and habitats for animals. This, in addition to overhunting, resulted in the extinction of the Aurochs in 1627, as an example. Farming changed the fate of the nation, stressing the already limited resources of a small kingdom. As a result, humans had just as much of an impact on their land as the land had on them. This influence can still be felt greatly today.