Landscape Planning

1981 Landscape Planning in Denmark

Denmark is a country of green islands floating just above sea level, covered with deciduous forests that grow lushly on fertile soil kept constantly moist by rainfall that is evenly distributed throughout the year. The landscape planning in Denmark has developed as a relationship between the pre-existing basic natural conditions and the human activities operating on the land.

Actually still nowadays the agricultural landscape in one of the outstanding aspects of the planning on open spaces in this country. But a real landscape planning begins only in the fifties of last century as a consequence of the industrial and urban development and the need both of protecting the environment and of fulfilling the need to recreation of the urban population.

This research has been done at the Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole of Copenhagen and in collaboration with some Danish landscape architects.

WHERE

Copenhagen, Denmark

WHEN

1978-1979 Research scholarship The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation

1979-1980 Research scholarship The Ministry of Education of Denmark

WHO

Research and Work group

Andersoon Sven-Ingvar, Landscape architecture in Denmark, Vallerini Lorenzo, Landscape and environmental planning in Denmark, Draeger Carlo, Planning of the Greater Copenhagen, Thougaard Niels, Koge Bay Beach Park, Munk Erik, The West Forest Park

WHAT

Landscape planning in Denmark is characterized by a close interconnection with the planning of urban areas and that of agricultural areas and natural systems. This peculiarity arises not only from a sensitivity to the environment that has always been very important – the first Nature Conservation Act dates back to 1917 – but also and above all from a historical-economic development that is predominantly agricultural with very large farms scattered over a good part of the territory with a concentration of population in a few urban areas.

The research-study was developed on different levels of depth.

A national overview of landscape planning and territorial planning policies connected to environmental protection policies with insights into the methodologies of Landscape Analyses and the systems of green areas in urban territories, with particular attention to the metropolitan area of the Greater Copenhagen.

A focus on the system of green and recreational areas of the Greater Copenhagen, integrated with the metropolitan transport system and the development areas – Five Finger Plan of 1947 and Regional Plan of 1973-80 – starting from the city center, to the nineteenth-century neighbourhoods until to the entire northern territory of the island of Sealand where more than two million people live.

Two case studies that exemplify the urban development of the system of urban open-green spaces, carried out with landscape design projects with strong public participation in the southern outskirts of Copenhagen, the Koge Bay Beach Park, and in the most central area of the third urban development belt, the West Forest Park, an “urban forest” ante litteram.

What emerges from this work, beyond the economic and organizational difficulties encountered by the landscape planning system in Denmark, is the capacity of the public bodies in interfacing with each other, combined however with an – increasing awareness by the majority of the population on the issues of protection and correct use of natural and aesthetic resources of the landscape and, finally, a pragmatism in the implementation of landscape design interventions.

PUBBLICATIONS

1987 | Vallerini Lorenzo, Planning of green areas in the Greater Copenhagen, in Rivista “Urbanistica” n.86 March 1987, Milano: pp. 65-71 (ISSN 0042-1022)

1981 | Andersoon Sven-Ingvar, The Landscape planning in Denmark, in Rivista “Parametro” n.93 January-February 1981, Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp. 13 (EAN 2560907023390)

1981 | Vallerini Lorenzo, Planning and administration of land and environment in Denmark, in Rivista “Parametro” n. 93 January-February 1981, Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp. 14-37 (EAN 2560907023390)

1981 | Draeger Carlo, The planning for recreation in the Greater Copenhagen Region, in Rivista “Parametro” n. 93 January-February 1981, Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp. 38-43 (EAN 2560907023390)

1981 | Thougaard Niels, Koge Bay Beach Park, in Rivista “Parametro” n. 93 January-February 1981, Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp. 44-49 (EAN 2560907023390)

1981 | Munk Erik, The West Forest a new large forest area at Copenhagen, in Rivista “Parametro” n. 93 January-February 1981, Faenza Editrice SpA, Faenza: pp. 50-53 (EAN 2560907023390)