Sunday was a beautiful, crisp fall day here in Copenhagen, and I took the opportunity to visit a place I've heard a lot about: Ørestad. Ørestad is a “new town,” a built-from-scratch development outside of the city. Fellow students described it (positively) as a showcase of modern architecture, but always with the caveat that the street life “is weird” or “doesn't work.” The City of Bellevue, where I've interned for the past two years, is working with Sound Transit and the private sector to develop the areas around the East Link light rail stations, and this seemed like a good opportunity to see how Copenhagen—a smart growth giant—performed when it got a similar chance.
The Danish parliament passed the enabling legislation for Ørestad in the early 1990s as part of a long term plan to channel growth and boost the competitiveness of the region. The Øresund bridge, which now links Copenhagen and Malmö, Sweden, was also included in that plan. The legislation created a company—jointly owned by the Copenhagen municipality and the state—to oversee an architecture competition and to develop the site. If all goes according to plan, Ørestad will some day be home to 20,000 people and 80,000 jobs. A strip of land about 3 miles long and 2000' wide, it straddles an impressive confluence of infrastructure: a regional rail line, a metro line, bus lines, arterials, and a motorway leading to the Øresund bridge. It's a monster TOD by Western standards.
I approached Ørestad by bike, across the Sjællandsbroen (“Zealand Bridge”) which connects mainland Copenhagen to Amager island across the Kalvebodløbet waterway. You can see Ørestad rising in the background of this photo.
Ørestad's far enough from the central city that I'm guessing your typical cyclist won't be pedaling out there. It feels like it's in the middle of nowhere.
Speaking of, you might expect transportation planners to cut corners in this context, painting a bike lane instead of pouring a grade-separated cycle track, for instance. You'd be wrong. I was on paths and tracks the entire four miles from my apartment building to the site. That's one of the great things about Copenhagen. You can trust the network, even through the least-trafficked segments. In the U.S. the infrastructure would have shriveled up and died on the side of some 50 mph highway, leaving me to white-knuckle it along the shoulder. I'm convinced that, especially for vulnerable users, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Moving on now. Here are a couple of shots to show you just how strange this place looks from the outside. You've got avant-garde, high-density architecture next to a wind turbine, next to...a huge empty field?
When I was a kid I read a sci-fi short story about the last humans on a 50th-century Earth. They ran out the clock by sailing around and using nanoassemblers to conjure up replicas of cities from the wasteland. I was reminded of that story while standing here, alone between the shiny new buildings and the not-quite-natural grassland of the Amager Fælled.
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