Jan Gehl on Good City Building
Danish architect and urban designer Jan Gehl speaks with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art about urban planning over the last fifty years, the interplay of life and form, and his efforts of enabling pedestrians to "reconquer the city."
For those knowledgable of the work and words of Gehl – he is responsible for the pedestrianization of streets in Copenhagen, New York, and elsewhere, and the author of numerous books on architecture and cities, including his classic Life Between Buildings – will find some familiar refrains from the 81-year-old architect. Nevertheless, the 37-minute interview is worth watching for the way it expresses the principles of Gehl's practice – e.g. the importance of human scale – through his words, which are interspersed between images of his home city of Copenhagen, where Gehl's efforts have had the greatest impact.