16.10.2017 - Ausgabe: 5/2017

New space for activities can transform urban life

By Lars Hjorth Baerentzen (President of IAKS Nordic and Communications Consultant at The Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities)

In Denmark urban spaces are becoming drivers of change that can enhance the quality of life, make more people physically active and strengthen local neighborhoods. It is happening by transforming worn down parking areas, industrial harbors and schoolyards into new areas for sports and activity.

                                         

Sports halls and traditional sports facilities are still very popular in Denmark. 61 percent of grown-ups and 83 percent of children are active in sports and a lot of them visit a sports hall or another traditional sports facility every week. But there is a change in the way teenagers and young adults like to be active. Their way of life are not suited for the very structured club memberships with predetermined weekly schedules for practice and competition so they drop out of the traditional sports. A lot of them are still active. They go jogging, they do street sports and maybe they join a fitness center. Which means that they no longer belong to the communities and social structures that they can experience in the sports clubs.

This development in sports activity for young people can be seen as a problem or no problem at all. It can also be seen as a challenge of how to design sports facilities with a new approach. It could also prove to be one of the keys to create stronger and more appealing urban spaces that can bring neighborhoods together.

By creating appealing urban spaces that allows for many different sports and activities, teenagers, young adults and other people who find the traditional sports clubs old fashioned can still find a fun way to motivate themselves for sports and activities. These urban spaces can bring neighborhoods together and become the surroundings in which people meet each other. Just like the sports clubs can.

That is why the design of open and active urban spaces should never be limited to sports only. They have to be spaces for inactivity as well. They need room for sitting and talking. For “hanging out” with old and new friends.

These urban spaces will function best when the local neighbourhoods and interest groups are invited to participate in the design phase together with architects, engineers, municipalities and fundraisers.

This approach secures that obvious user groups are not overlooked and create a strong sense of local ownership.

Urban spaces for activity have proven to be drivers of change in a larger perspective. Urban spaces can change the way people live and use the towns and cities. Successfully designed and positioned urban spaces can attract visitors and users from far away and they can even attract new residents in former industrial areas that are becoming places for offices and residential buildings.

So how does facilities like this look? Where can they be placed? How is it possible to find new space in dense urban areas?

 

Build on rooftops

Building on sports facilities on rooftops is not a new idea. In large cities there is hardly any free space to find so it seems obvious to go for buildings with flat rooftops that can be used as activity spaces. And yet it is not seen that often. When someone dares to do it the design is very often quite traditional. Maybe a tennis court for the residents or employees in a building. Maybe a small baskeball court or a small soccer field. There is almost a guaranteed user success in putting a bit of space for ball games on top of a building. Particularly soccer. And the happy users will most often be teenage boys and no one else.

But what happens if architects, municipalities and local neighborhoods discuss the possibilities? If new sports that fit perfectly with urban spaces gets more attention in plans and designs? One solution can be seen in Copenhagen. A huge development and transformation project is happening in the northern harbor area of the Danish capital. In Nordhavn most of the former harbor functions are closed and the area is fast becoming the new high profile place to work and live. New buildings are shooting out of the ground at great speed. It would be very easy to forget that the new residents not only have to work and sleep but also have to enjoy their time of leisure when they move in.

So many economic interests are at stake in a developing city area as Nordhavn, but the municipality did find a solution for an active space that is open and free to use for everyone. On top of a parking house. And not for football or other ball games. The design targets outdoor strength training and running practice. And is at the same time a playground for kids. That way the user groups are much more diverse than would be the case if it was only a space for ball games. Teenagers of both sexes and young parents with their kids can be attracted to use the space actively. And everyone can just go up there to enjoy the spectacular view of Nordhavn and the rest of Copenhagen.

 

From parking lot to an active park

In the city of Vejle there used to be a very typical, very bleak area for parking cars in the middle of the city. The parking lot was located on the route that a lot of students used when they walked from the train station or bus station to their schools and centers of education. It was basically a short cut for the students to cross the parking lot. This parking lot was scrapped. In many towns and cities such an idea is unthinkable. But in Vejle the parking lot was scrapped and a new park designed for spontaneous activity was established in its place. A park with plenty of room for ball games and other sports and with a very well thought out space for hanging out with friends. Something that is immensely important for teenagers’ way of being active and not active. Use the barriers on the ball court as a place to sit. It sounds simple but is very often overlooked. That way the restless mix of being active and non-active that teenagers often show is supported and the facility suits them better.

 

Skatepark in a schoolyard

Even the most densely populated urban areas have schools. And most schools have a little space surrounding them. In Denmark it seemed a quite startling idea that schoolyards could be open activity areas for everyone in a neighborhood. The fences had to be torn down. The number of teachers in attendance outside during school hours had to be increased. The schools would have to see themselves as welcoming parts of the local community. And the success proved to be huge. It is such an obvious idea that a few years after the introduction of open schoolyards a lot of people are wondering why it was not always like this. In Copenhagen all modernized schoolyards will be redesigned from this principle. One early example of this is Amager Faelled Skole where the schoolyard has become open and accessible without a fence between the street and the schoolyard.

When designing open schoolyards the kids are asked what they would like to do in their schoolyard – which is unusual enough – but so are the local residents and sports clubs and other people with an interest in the public spaces in their area. The outcome is very locally connected and unusual sports grounds and activity areas. Perhaps the most radical example can be seen in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. A very forward thinking inner city school embraced the idea of getting a skatepark in the front of the main entrance rather than keeping the traditional schoolyard. That’s one way to go but other schools are more moderate and have chosen designs that transforms the typical schoolyard to places for activity all day for a lot of people.

 

Harbor Baths are urban areas
 

One of the most remarkable success stories in Denmark regarding new urban spaces for sports and activities are the many harbor baths that have been reintroduced as a new urban space since the beginning of this century. Studies show that the impact of the harbor baths are in no way limited to being new swimming and waters sports facilities. More than any other urban spaces the harbor baths are transforming city scapes and the quality of life. The basis of the success is that the water in the Danish harbors have become clean enough to swim in. So there is no need for special basins or water filters when a harbor bath is established. The activity goes under directly in the harbor water.

The harbor baths attracts a vast amount of users. The users of harbor baths are from local neighborhoods and people from other areas of the towns and cities – and very often also tourists and other visitors. By creating a close connection between the harbor baths and the nearest surroundings it is possible to create a completely new experience and perception of what used to be worn down industrial areas that no one had any interest in. Harbor Baths as successful drivers for city change is not limited to the size of the city. They are equally as successful in Copenhagen as they are in towns with 20.000 or 2.000 inhabitants. It is important to see and design harbor baths as water sports facilities that can support a lot of different water sports all year round. Like a sports hall on water.

 

A free and playful theme

These examples of how to position and design new space for activity in an urban setting all have one thing in common. They were not designed for the traditional way of doing sports as it is done at  football grounds, sports hall or aquatic centers. They all have a free and playful theme. They are places that anyone can go to be active at any time of the day without paying for it. They are public investments like traditional park areas. They are also places that anyone can go just to be there and look at what is going on. They are examples of how municipalities can integrate sports and activity in urban planning, modernization and transformation in solutions that welcomes different ways of being active. It takes daring municipalities and talented architects to do this. It is worth the consideration of creating active urban spaces when you look at the possibilities of successful transformations of daily life in urban areas as these examples present.

The Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities has been involved in modernizing the way of thinking and designing sports facilities since 1994. The facilities are met with heavy architectural and functional demands, which can inspire the development and create more, better and new opportunities for activity. The examples in this article have all been created in cooperation with the ideas and funding from The Danish Foundation for Culture and Sports Facilities.

 

 

Photo: Peter Sörensen, By & Havn