According to Monocle’s Mr. Tyler Brûlé, Copenhagen has several severe qualities compared to other metropolis. Only one problem gets the highlight in an interviewed in the Danish newspaper Politiken (9 June 2008). Violence to the Copenhagen’s harbour front. He criticizes the massive glass buildings along the harbour front, which has deserted entire neighbourhoods, but he expresses hopes that the City Council and the urban planners have learned from past grave mistakes.

Unfortunately, he is wrong. At this very moment, the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen, Ms. Ritt Bjerregaard, is trying – in close collaboration with a wealthy private, commercial investor, Realdania – to get approval for a devastating construction of an enormous office building at the harbour front’s last open space at the very centre of the historical centre. The main purpose of the Realdania project would be to host the domicile of Realdania themselves.

The proposed architecture will – if build – disfigure one of the city’s most important and valuable historical and recreational areas. To enabling the voluminous construction, Realdania demands that the City Council compromise a large number of municipal urban planning regulations concerning building volume, building heights, public access to the water front, as well as the national cultural heritage protection laws; regulations which have secured the city’s integrity for many decades.

Monocle and Mr. Brûlé have rightly awarded Copenhagen the attractive prize. Copenhagen is truly one of the world best cities to live in. However, the current Lord Mayor is about to compromising the capital’s attractiveness and devaluating the city’s enormous potential to become even more attractive by making the harbour and canal environment people friendly in stead of commercial friendly.

Copenhagen’s inhabitants are not only privileged by living in one of the world’s best cities, they are by tradition actively contributing to the shaping of the city. Denmark was first to introduce public participation in psychical planning and urban development.

Regarding the specific matter, the Friends of the Brewery Site (in Danish: Bryghusgruppen) has, supported by thousands of Copenhageners and civil society groupings, presented a unique vision for a new, attractive recreational and cultural urban space on the Brewery Site, which would, in our view, make Copenhagen one of the world’s best capitals to live in for many decades to come.

Thursday 12 June, at a ceremony in Copenhagen, Mr. Brûlé will give the Lord Mayor the prize.

The Friends of the Brewery Site encourage Mr. Brûlé to address the Lord Mayor’s arbitrary urban development policy with specific reference to the Brewery Site along the harbour front and the historical canal environment, and suggest Mr. Brûlé to calling upon the Lord Mayor and the City Council members to seriously reconsider Realdania’s devastating construction plan and instead working together with the inhabitants towards realising the harbour front’s real potential as a recreational zone in a wonderful historical area - in the World’s best city to live in.

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