The Copenhagen Suburbs
Was out in the suburbs of Copenhagen today for a bit, and they look, well, a lot like American suburbs except with smaller-than-average houses. But if you go visit an American suburb with smaller-than-average houses—usually an older one—then you’ll very much have the right idea. What was quite different, however, was the transportation from the suburbs into the central city. Copenhagen’s suburbs are organized around the “finger plan” illustrated in the map on the right. Each finger is, as you would do in the United States, built around an arterial road. But the roads have fewer lanes than an American arterial would have. But running alongside them (or at least running alongside the one our bus was driving on) are very nice, very wide bike paths. And roughly parallel to the roadways are the S-Tog commuter rail lines.
Consequently, there are fewer people driving on the road than you would have in the US and there are more people biking and taking the train.
It’s worth noting that this sort of thing leaves overall automobile congestion neither better nor worse than an alternative strategy of fewer options and wider roads would. Insofar as you build road capacity, drivers will fill that capacity up. You get a choice of what level of automobile traffic you want to see the congestion at. But if you actually want uncrowded rush hour roads then you have basically only two choices. One is that you can build “road to nowhere” type projects where the economic rationale for infrastructure development is so poor that people don’t really want to drive on your shiny new highway. The other is that you can do congestion-pricing. But absent congestion-pricing, even the really admirable provision of alternative modes has limited impact. When valuable goods are given away for free, you get shortages. Copenhagen is apparently considering following Stockholm and Oslo and implementing a congestion fee, but they haven’t done it yet.
Still the moral of the story is, I think, pretty clear. When you build infrastructure to facilitate commuting from suburbs to central cities, lots of people will avail themselves of the opportunity to move to the new suburbs. But how they actually get to the central city depends on what kind of infrastructure you build. If you build giant highways, they’ll drive. If you build smaller roads and also some trains, then some people will drive and some will take the train.
For the sake of comparison, note that Copenhagen is a pretty small city. There are 521,000 people in the city proper and 1.8 million in the metro area. That would make it the 30th largest metro area in the United States, slightly bigger than the Las Vegas MSA and slightly smaller than the Kansas City MSA. All told, about 129 million Americans live in metropolitan areas that are bigger than metro Copenhagen. About a third of Danish people live in Greater Copenhagen, whereas over 40 percent of Americans live in metro areas that are bigger than Greater Copenhagen.
24 Responses to “The Copenhagen Suburbs”
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October 7th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Will you have some time to explore on your own and visit other parts of the country? Denmark is more than just Copenhagen.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
When you build infrastructure to facilitate commuting from suburbs to central cities, lots of people will avail themselves of the opportunity to move to the new suburbs. But how they actually get to the central city depends on what kind of infrastructure you build.
It’s not just people that move to the suburbs. It’s jobs and shopping and entertainment and other amenities too. So there’s less reason for people to travel to the central city either to work or for other reasons. Copenhagen has been following same broad trend as most other cities in the developed world. The central city population peaked long ago. Almost all the growth is in the suburbs. Car travel is growing much faster than travel by public transportation. Danes are increasingly living like Americans. You can fiddle around with bike paths and other distractions, but unless the cost of driving dramatically increases the long-term trend isn’t likely to change.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Speaking as someone who lives in one of those other parts?
no, denmark pretty much is copenhagen.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
The figure for inhabitants of Copenhagen only includes the municipality of Copenhagen and not the municipality of Fredriksberg, which would add about 100.000 more inhabitants.
The beauty of the finger plan is that it allows for the inhabitants of the long slim suburbs to live near nature and recreational areas. The fact that the plan is over 60 years old and has worked near perfectly is a testament to the power of negative planning.
/Limagolf
October 7th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
no, denmark pretty much is copenhagen.
Don’t sell yourself short.
I’ve been all over your damn country and any one of your cities is better than anything I’ve got within 200 miles. Enjoy it, please, because I can’t.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Hope you had a chance to visit the Louisiana, beautiful modern art museum in the suburbs to the north.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Looks like the Danes have been reading their Christopher Alexander. That’s some pattern 3 in action right there
October 7th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
The figure for inhabitants of Copenhagen only includes the municipality of Copenhagen and not the municipality of Fredriksberg, which would add about 100.000 more inhabitants.
Right, but the figure for the Copenhagen metro area includes all that.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I lived in one of these suburbs (Charlottenlund) for a while when I was in high school, and took the train and bus in to the international school downtown. I seriously think living in Denmark is what led me to depart from my conservative Southern upbringing. I listened to my dad sneer that the high taxes meant that most people would never own anything, but I noticed that people could get around with or without a car (especially impressive to a teenager), there was a social safety net so that people who were out of work would not be homeless, health care was available to everyone, even temporary residents like us. This all looked pretty humane to me. I was really sad to leave when it was time to move back home.
October 7th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
> You can fiddle around with bike paths and other
> distractions, but unless the cost of driving dramatically
> increases the long-term trend isn’t likely to change.
I guess Mixmaster missed the fun with oil prices in the summer of 2008. The deep recession put a stop to that, but is there anyone here who thinks that $4/gal gasoline (Midwest prices; $5 in CA, NYC, and Chicago) won’t return when the economy picks up? How about bets on when we hit $10/gal – I’ll take 2014 at the latest.
Cranky
October 7th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
$4/gal gasoline had only a small effect on transportation patterns. Keep dreaming of that $10 gas. I’m sure it’ll arrive any decade now. The primary effect of rising gas prices on the transportation market will be to accelerate the adoption of more fuel-efficient and alternative fuel vehicles.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Sounds very similar to Portland, OR, where I live. Highest percentage of bike commuters in the nation, and we get rain for 8 months a year. But – we also build bike lanes, and commuter light rail. And people use them! Of course, the right bitches about them, too and wants all the transportation money spent on roads for cars…
My response = “show me ONE American city that’s built its’ way out of traffic congestion.” Their response… <>
October 7th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Oops – that was supposed to read: Their response: … (insert crickets chirping here.)
October 7th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Not so much suburb-suburb (circumferential) commuting there as suburb-city (radial) commuting, it looks like.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Wiki re: Competing S-trains, Bus, and Metro systems serving Copenhagen: “Although owned by different companies, the systems use interchangeable tickets.”
Smart, like the NFL. Like the EU (sorta). Like China. Centrally planned, mutually beneficial, cooperation AND competition.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
One of the reasons I love golf is that once you’re out of the parking lot and off the first tee -providing a decent tee shot, of course, worm burners no further than the ladies tee don’t count- you’re entering the space between the fingers.
Or, in the endless sprawl environment in which I know find myself, the every decreasing space between the closing tentacles of multiple octupi.
October 7th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Sounds very similar to Portland, OR, where I live. Highest percentage of bike commuters in the nation, and we get rain for 8 months a year. But – we also build bike lanes, and commuter light rail. And people use them!
Some people use them. Mainly younger people and low-income people. Even in Portland, the vast majority of people get to work by automobile. About 69% of workers who live in the city of Portland, and about 81% of workers who live in the Portland metropolitan area. Less than a third of the metro area population lives in the city, and the suburban population is growing faster than the city population. Between 2000 and 2008, the city grew by about 5% and the suburbs grew by about 17%.
My response = “show me ONE American city that’s built its’ way out of traffic congestion.”
Congestion tends to increase with density. Central cities tend to be more congested than suburbs. If you want less congestion, live and work in the suburbs or exurbs.
If congestion is a problem because it increases travel times, then alternatives such as public transportation, biking and walking are even worse problems. For all but a very small share of commutes, commuting by car is faster than the alternatives.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:20 am
For all but a very small share of commutes, commuting by car is faster than the alternatives.
This is a function of the built environment and human geography. It is not an inherent characteristic of the automobile versus biking or public transportation.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:35 am
This is a function of the built environment and human geography. It is not an inherent characteristic of the automobile versus biking or public transportation.
The “inherent characteristics” of each form of transportation includes aspects of the “built environment.” Automobiles and buses need roads and parking space. Trains need railtrack and stations. Bikes need roads or paths. We’re not building, and not likely to build in the future, very much of the kind of environment in which bikes or public transportation would be faster than automobiles for the vast majority of journeys. Even for commuting, where public transportation tends to be at its most competitive with driving, it’s still slower.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:13 am
You’re wrong, Mixner.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:27 am
I take the train every day to work in Copenhagen from Borup. I takes me 45 minutes. Every time I’ve had to drive, it’s taken me at least an hour, and the parking cost is ridiculous. In the train, I read, sleep whatever. Driving I just get high blood pressure. Anybody in my office building who can bike, does, winter, spring, summer or fall. Or else they take the train. An almost invisible few drive.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Hey! I too am in Copenhagen ATM! Aside from the rain I can confirm the city is nice. Although I’ve found the city is small enough that I can walk wherever I need so I am not qualified (or rather even less so qualified than usual) to comment on public transit.
October 8th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Re: Even for commuting, where public transportation tends to be at its most competitive with driving, it’s still slower.
True of buses, but less true of trains. When I used S Florida’s Tri-Rail to commute my 22 miles trip to work the commute times were on the average the same
October 8th, 2009 at 7:40 am
> Even for commuting, where public transportation
> tends to be at its most competitive with driving,
> it’s still slower.
Tell you what Mixmaster: try commuting by car from the south end of Naperville IL (where the hot exurban growth has been since 1995) to anywhere in the Chicago metro area where there are a significant number of jobs. Compare that to the commuter rail times to anywhere along the Burlington line, including of course downtown Chicago. The train is 2x-3x faster, and of course as noted taking the train doesn’t raise the blood pressure the way driving in heavy traffic does. But hey, what do all those million-dollar LaSalle street dudes riding the train know compared to the wisdom of Mixmaster?
Cranky