Livable Cities - London AMPS | City, University of London Page 254 BACKGROUND ON GREEN URBAN SPACES In Raymond Unwin’s book, Town Planning in Practice from 1909 it is argued that urban green spaces are important parts of modern urban planning practice, and they are to be regarded main components in what makes a city livable, ‘We shall need to secure still more open ground, air space and, sunlight for each dwelling; we shall need to make proper provision for parks and playgrounds, to control our streets, to plan their direction, their width, and their character, so that they may in the best possible way, minister to the convenience of the community’.2 Unwin expressed a common notion among the early modernistic urban planners, namely that the dense, dirty and crowed industrial city was to be infused with light and air to make the cities livable. A similar emphasis on the contact to nature and landscape to make cities livable is to be found in Ebenezer Howard, Gardens Cities of Tomorrow.3 Also, Le Corbusier aimed at cities as, ‘Towers in a park setting’4 suggesting that not only needed the cities green urban spaces, but the city to be located in the park. Danish Park Policies Four key documents in Danish urban and urban green space planning documents and illustrates how these ideas informed the Danish urban discourse and especially the development of Greater Copenhagen. The four documents are, Park Politik for Sogn og Købstad, from 1931 by landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen5, in which he presented a range of ideas on public green urban spaces, leisure areas, playgrounds, allotment gardens, urban green typologies and nature conservation. In the second key document, Københavnsegnens grønne Omraader. Forslag til et System af Omraader for Friluftsliv, from 1936, the question on how to develop Copenhagen in ways that provided access to green areas for the citizens while also providing space for housing, industry and infrastructure. C. Th. Sørensen co-authored this document with Olaf Forchhammer.6 The Fingerplan, from 1947 by Dansk Byplanlaboratorium7 is the third key document outlining the spatial and functional relationship and structure between the build area and the open landscape. The fourth key document, Parkpolitik -boligområderne, byerne og det åbne land, from 1988 is co- authored by the three landscape architects, Sven-Ingvar Andersson, Ib Asger Olsen and Annelise Bramsnæs8 in which they added planning of the rural areas and the transformation of existing built-up and industrial areas to the range of landscape architectural assignments. A common notion of nature and landscape characterize the four documents: Nature and landscape within cities are a pre-condition for livable cities and conditioned by urban life. This notion was turned into a landscape architectural program for the twentieth century, defining the tasks as, o Housing o Recreation – parks, sports facilities, gardens, playgrounds o Infrastructure o Infrastructure, energy planning, landfills o Cemeteries/graveyards o Public, institutional, facilities Today defined as, The Green Cultural Heritage9 and considered important contributions to the formation of the Danish Welfare State. EXAMPLES OF URBAN NATURE PROJECTS In this section two examples of urban green space designs are examined to better understand how and by whom urban nature projects come into being.
