worldbank.org says that 56% of the entire world’s human population lives in urban areas and that this trend is predicted to increase to around 70% by 2050. Despite this we still have cities that are dangerous to humans through poor transportation design. After living in the Benelux region for so long I was pretty upset when I stepped out of Copenhagen’s Central station to immediately be met with a large roadway full of noisy trucks, sirens, and taxi’s. It felt more like New York city than the bike haven I was promised.
Here is a quick video I took coming out from Copenhagen Central:
Compare that to the first 30 seconds of this video posted by HL, Walking from Amsterdam Central station to Dam square:
You could say that Copenhagen central is more convenient, but why is it that city planning in most cities seems to focus on convenience rather than health, safety, and enjoy-ability?
Why is it in this public place full of people that so many have to be subjected to loud and intense noises?
In one video there is a cacophany of noise while the masses huddle up on the side of the road en masse waiting for the 30 or so angry people in cars honking at eachother to pass by while in the next there is a completely human plaza where people have space and there is only the noise of chatter and a pleasant ding from a nearby tram designed not for other trams to hear them, but rather for humans nearby.
It seems to me that there is some great focus and view of cities as economic powerhouses (which they are), but this for some reason supersedes cities as human habitats. What good are the fruits of a large economy when, we, everyone who is reading this blog, is hurt and accosted by hazards of all sorts: Gaseous, Acoustic, and Physical when entering most urban spaces? The result of this poor judgement in planning can be seen in the massive amounts of car-related deaths, rise in obesity, and economic costs of car-centric infrastructure to the household. In the United States obesity is still rising, and the CDC states that the cost of this was around $173 billion in 2019. Americans, who often have no choice but to drive, spend on average nearly 3% of their income on car insurance. These are the real economic costs of planning that takes human life and living as a footnote. Imagine the benefits to overall health if we could instead spend 2% of income on human-centric infrastructure.
Copenhagen is a step in the right direction, but it is far from the end. It is not enough to simply add bike lanes beside every stretch of road if those roads still divide our neighborhoods and generate so many negative externalities for over half the world’s population.