From Jane Jacobs to Livable Cities

Jan Gehl
Gehl Architects, Denmark

Description

Jan Gehl will discuss the course of design and design research in the past 50 years - the period roughly the time between his own first presentation at an environmental design research conference (Architectural Psychology in Kingston, UK, in 1970) and EDRA 50. This will include his own research and design that has helped shaped the use of space in Copenhagen, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, and Moscow...among others.

He will note how, in the lead up to that period Modernists “threw out everything known about good human habitat” so that in 1961, by the time Jane Jacobs rose to oppose Robert Moses, designers “knew NOTHING and had to built up the Environmental Design Research knowledge step by step from square one."…"Now we KNOW how to make good environments!! But do we make sufficient use of all this new knowledge??”

Bio

Jan Gehl, architect, professor and consultant on urban design, has focused his career on improving the quality of urban life, by reorienting the design of the city towards the pedestrian, public life and cyclists.

Forty years of research at the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture in Copenhagen have resulted in a number of by now "classic" books. Life Between Buildings (1971) and Cities for the People (2010), now published in more than forty languages, are among the most referenced resources in city planning.

In 2000, Gehl founded with Helle Søholt Gehl Architects with the purpose of applying theories to practical planning. Major improvement projects have been carried out for Copenhagen, Melbourne, Sydney, London, New York and Moscow.