NewYork.TwodeputymayorscametoCo- penhagen and concluded after a few days that they wanted to live in such a city. This very quickly led to the closures of parts of Broadway, which I participated in actively, despite nobody believing that was pos- sible. Times, Union and Madison squares became places for people, for drinking cof- fee, for conversing... When Moscow heard about New York, they called us and said that they wanted to humanise the city, which was a real shock for me. Cars were everywhere; you couldn’t even cross the street! Terrible! But no other city in the world has done so much so quickly. Just a year and a half later, grey streets be- came green, cars disappeared from the main streets and bicycles appeared – says Jan, explaining his experiences from just a few of the many cities that he has helped to return to their essence and recall why and for whom they exist. According to him, cities should be comfortable for people, but they should also be suitable for the devel- opment of civilisation and democra- cy in many ways. First and foremost, people need to go outside and not sit in front of the TV. – The ideal city is one where you like to go out onto the streets, to meet different political, ethnic, religious and age groups, all those different people who are your fellow citizens. Go out and meet them, to better understand them. Go out in order to make yourself healthier too, because natural movement is essential for the human body and the human spirit. Get out of cars, sit on bikes, walk, smile, enjoy parks. Look at Copenha- gen. Its streets are full of children and old people, and that’s the best indica- tor of how good this city is for life...
cats are happy. If you succeed in that, you can be sure that people will be happy too. - If you ask me whether I like Barcelona, Prague or Dubai, I will tell you that I don’t like Dubai. Lazy architects design tall buildings. Man is created to look ahead of himself, not up or down. He can see and shout as high as the fifth floor. Above that, we enter the sphere of air traffic – considers this architect, whose goal is for cities to one day be com- pletely free of noise polluters on four wheels. He is, of course, aware that Copenha- gen succeeded in this endeavour because it has very well-developed transport, trains
and a metro system, which allow this city to have the most kilometres of pedestri- an zones . This city takes lanes from cars every year and allocates them for pedes- trians, which is why almost 50 per cent of Danes go to work by bike every day. These are all reasons why the world has begun to look to Copenhagen as a model and to in- vite Jan Gehl and his team to change things in other parts of the planet... - Melbourne made a wonderful shift, with an avenue modelled on ours, Sydney is abolishing traffic at full speed and chang- ing the way of life, as was primarily done by
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