Stanley attended the Jan Gehl lecture and found a great connection to co-design.
His theme was the long lack of human scale and life in the architectural and planning design processes, how architects since the 60’s have been anti-people (as a newly graduated architect he had to change because his girl friend, later his wife, was a psychologist and asked him, “Why do architects hate people?”) Planners, he said, have for years been sweet on the car and now must be sweet on people, and particularly, sweet on cyclists.
He said they now have a problem of bicycle congestion in Copenhagen and must push bike-lanes into more car-lanes. Research shows that for every kilometre bicycled the city gains 25c, and for every kilometre car travelled the city loses 10c. And when New York Times Square went pedestrian the merchants around increased turn-over by 71%. Great stuff.
- Stan
See a video of Jan Gehl here: select the photo below:
