Moving between Old and New

Both the historic preservation and the sustainable development movements have adopted more holistic approaches over the past three decades. In both cases, the focus has turned away from individual buildings and moved instead to entire neighborhoods. So while it is important to consider the energy efficiency improvements that can be made to “listed” or “preservation-worthy” buildings, it is also necessary to discuss broader infrastructural issues. How do you preserve a historic neighborhood while transforming it into a modern sustainable community? After attending the Velo-City conference last week, I became eager to learn about how these potentially conflicting interests might be reconciled in the transportation sector.
 

Sustainable transport systems necessarily include several different modes of transportation: public and private motor vehicles, subways, light rails, commuter and regional trains, and pathways for bicyclists and pedestrians. Lots of vehicles require lots of space. But as a glance at a map of Copenhagen will reveal, European-style historic districts often do not have enough room to accommodate all possible users. In certain parts of its historic center, Copenhagen’s streets are no more than 10 to 12 meters (about 33 to 40 feet) wide. Is it possible to make room for motorists, bus riders, cyclists, and pedestrians in Copenhagen’s narrow cobblestone streets?
 

Thanks to some expert transportation planning, Copenhagen has managed just that [1]. The city’s narrowest streets no longer allow motorist traffic in both directions but have been converted into combined one-way motorist/two-way cyclist streets. Buses travel only on a limited number of “bus priority” streets in the city center. In determining how to address competing transportation demands in this area, Copenhagen’s city planners have focused on establishing “link-ups.” Rather than attempting to create distinct bicycle lanes on every street in the historic center, for example, planners have given priority to new bike lanes that would link existing ones together. In this way, the city has managed to increase mobility in the entire area while still working within the constraints of the existing city grid. And the cobblestones: rather than destroy the character of the center city by paving the oldest streets—and rather than eliminate a road surface whose permeability provides excellent drainage—the city has placed smooth tiled tracks along most cobblestone streets, a gesture of respect to the cyclist experience.
 

Even in Copenhagen, however, ongoing issues in the historic city center remain a focus for transportation planners. In the city’s most recent ten-year Cycle Policy [2], launched in 2002, one of nine “Focus Areas” is improving unsatisfactory cycling conditions in the city center. And the insufficient parking space for both cars and bicycles in the area does not yet have an easy answer and continues to dominate discussions about future transportation planning. But in Copenhagen’s successes thus far, we can see the importance both of determining priorities and planning accordingly—in, for example, the decision to remove two-way motorist traffic from the narrowest streets—and of developing innovative solutions—such as the smooth tracks on cobblestone streets.
 

Other European cities facing similar transportation management issues in their historic centers have adopted somewhat different approaches. In Amsterdam, a city with many narrow streets and even more cyclists, transportation planners have decided to separate motor vehicles and bicyclists as much as possible, rather than creating Copenhagen-style roads that allow both one-way drivers and two-way bicyclists. In this city, the narrow streets allow either two-way car traffic or two-way bicycle traffic, but not both. This alternative approach has worked in Amsterdam, but here, too, certain problems remain—the parking issue, for one.
 

Moving beyond the city center, Copenhagen’s example shows us that “adaptive reuse,” that preservationist mainstay, can be invaluable in establishing transportation networks. In the city’s efforts to create Super Cycle Highways that allow commuters to bike quickly between Copenhagen and its suburbs, planners have needed to work around existing roads and buildings. So once again, they have needed to search for innovative solutions, creating cycle highways in the place of abandoned railroad tracks and along the centuries-old ramparts outside of Copenhagen, now protected by the Danish Heritage Agency and soon to be used by local and tourist bicyclists alike. 
 

Transportation is an interesting issue to consider in this “historic preservation meets sustainable development” discussion because mobility is inherently dynamic. And as I see it, one of the greatest challenges for both the historic preservation and the sustainable development movements is avoiding stasis. Preservation cannot transform the built environment into a museum, nor can sustainability forget current needs while trying to provide for future ones. If urban planners manage to create sustainable transportation systems in historic city districts, then they will have traveled a long way towards reconciling these issues while creating a “liveable” city.