The beautified Copenhagen

I have, as a true ugly duckling, over the years undergone the transformation from grumpy Aarhus-inhabitant with an urge to visit the couches in my friends’ youth hubs to urban life-loving roséwine-sipping Copenhagen-Jutlander with a capital C.

Copenhagen's urban spaces are amazing to live life in - especially when the temperature reaches a bearable level, and the mood of the city twitches with tanned legs and anticipation of the coming festivities of the night.

The association Foreningen til Hovedstadens Forskønnelse - roughly translated to Association for the Beautification of the Capital, has also recognized Copenhagen’s potential a few years before me and have just released their 125th anniversary publication Beautification map of Copenhagen and the surroundings 2010.

For even though Copenhagen is beautiful there is plenty of room for beautification. The re-cently published map gives plenty of mere or less practical perspectives on how future Co-penhagen could turn out.

Christian Cold’s 6 km rejection is one of the more practical and immediately-doable ones – a suggestion on how to open the city's parks against the street life. In the essay he shows how a 'walking on the edge of Copenhagen's beautiful parks' actually consists of a wall of re-jection between the recreational park life and the everyday doings through the city - something I wasn’t aware of until now, but I fully agree should be addressed.

Ørstedsparken, The Botanical Garden and Øster Anlæg are all surrounded by closed fences or thickets, which do not correspond with the degree of diversity and movement the town is known for. And as he points out, the rejection does not make sense in our time. Why are we forced to detours to reach the delights? Fences and bushes are making it impossible to seize the moment.

Film director Max Kestner points to fully understandable ways to embark on new paths. As for example when he underlines that on a gray and dreary day, avoid Søgade and instead ride along Nansensgade and through Ørstedsparken. Otherwise, you yourself must be prepared for becoming sad and a little gray. Or if you are in the car and drive along Farimagsgade in the di-rection of Østerbro, there is no need to rush on the street between Åboulevarden and Venders-gade, you never catch the green light on Gothersgade anyway.

And as new-amagerkaner I am happy that the almost always neglected Amagerbro also has a spot in the publication on equal terms with the other boroughs in Copenhagen. Here we find some little more airy thoughts about the city’s potentials such as Supertanker’s thoughts and proposed designs for the urban potentials of Amager or architect Meredith Ahlfeldt-Mollerup and architect and artist Biba Fibiger’s dreams about Amagerbrogade. Imagine, if everyone was allowed to change their façade and make it more open, green, colorful, ugly, pretty, funny, personal ... together many small streams produce great poetry.

The beauty of the Beautification map is precisely the mix of concrete suggestions on how we can seize the city and be confirmed of or realize new potentials of Copenhagen urban city life and on the other hand do meet quite relevant and sometimes dreamy discussion and pro-posed designs for the future urban development.

The wrapping of a slightly tacky Kraks Map gives the publication the unique dimension to the book is made for use. So throw it under your arm and get out on streets, trails, parks, dreams and fantasies - and perhaps even engage yourself in beautifying the city. It is made to be used, not to gather dust on the shelf.

Foreningen til Hovedstadens Forskønnelse 1885-2010
http://www.hovedstaden.org/