this is my origin and my destination. our apartment here in frederiksberg in the heart of copenhagen. but in my work, travelling around the world, i look differently at my own city now. i see the challenges and i see the hurdles. this city has been a global benchmark for urbanism for many years, and i want to show you some of the great things that make this city so unique and make it work so well. leadership is no"resting on your laurels". it is a constant search for innovation, for improvement, for urban development. i want to find out what the state of the urban nation is right here, in my own city: copenhagen. but first... it's time for school. you guys ready? yeah. - all right. let's do it.

- at the very origin of this series, the very idea of the life-sized city, lies copenhagen. i've lived here for more than 20 years. and trust me: this city works. the danish capital is an inspiration on how to get it right. year in and year out, dozens of global rankings published by the economist, mercer, forbes, monocle, just to name a few,

have explored, analyzed and dissected copenhagen and placed it in their top tiers. and, well, this place is indeed impressive. hundreds of parks, a pristine revitalized harbourfront, a stunning bicycle network, public spaces... so many of them! pedestrian streets... so many of those too. and the list goes on. the city gets it and the people get it. so, is this it? are we done? is copenhagen the ultimate life-sized city? it may come close to being a definitive model for urban living on a human scale, but many questions are still unanswered, the first being: "is this model scalable?" this place isn't perfect. come on, no city is. but i do feel that each problem can be tackled with collective creativity and willpower. as i explore my hometown through the lens of this series, i'll talk to friends and colleagues, but i'll also meet new faces, people working to make copenhagen live up

to its reputation as one of the world's most life-sized cities. - as we've seen in many old cities, copenhagen's inner harbour went from being the backbone of the economy to a derelict and unpleasant dead zone. but like many things copenhagen, its revival has become a flagship of radical urban transformation. on a beautiful day like today, this is where you want to be: on or near the water. so i head out on an electric boat with a few friends to spend time in this unique public space: the harbour that had been neglected for decades. you can count on and you can make a lot of decisions in the city council, but if you don't have a lot of very active and engaged people living in your city who actually take charge of it, then you won't get very far. and i think most of the work in copenhagen is bottom up.

it's actually due to pressure from copenhageners saying: "we want something different." - right. in a nutshell, this city has a lord mayor and seven mayors in charge of the different departments. morten kabell was one of them: mayor of technical and environmental affairs. and in 2015, he transformed the co-creation philosophy that had guided the development of the city until then into an official policy. how long did this process take? you know, to transform copenhagen into a city that listens to the people and follows their lead, as well as designing based on their desires. so all the actual results, of course, have come up over the last decade. i mean, 20 years ago, when i was a kid, i definitely wouldn't swim in the harbour. just going to school on my own on a bicycle or something, i got really strict rules about where to go and where not to go. so this has taken a couple of decades, but not more than that. any city can do what copenhagen has done.

i mean, it's not something in our water, it's not our genes, it's not anything like that. any city in the world can become a good bicycle city. any city in the world can become a city where you take to the open spaces and really enjoy them, use them, spend your time out there. any city could actually do that... if you allow them to. when i was mayor, i was often asked by colleagues around the world: "how have you been able to afford it in copenhagen?" and my reply always was: "how have you been able not to afford it?" i mean, how can you actually afford building highways, building lots of very expensive road systems, when you can actually just choose bicycle infrastructure? copenhagen, 25 years ago, was a few days away from going bankrupt. and therefore, the city invested in the cheapest infrastructure: bicycle infrastructure. and that has actually turned out pretty great. the bridge that we are crossing under right now, we're talking about a bridge that cost 4 million euros, and it has 24 000 bicycle riders every single day. i mean, it's a huge mobility success. how much money does copenhagen put into bicycle

infrastructure in the past ten years or so? just around 280 million euros is the total cost. and well, to give an example, that's the same amount that one three-kilometre bypass north of copenhagen for cars cost. so you can choose: ten years of bicycle investment or one three-kilometre bypass. i think the choice should be easy. a lot of people look at copenhagen and they say it's so polished, so nordic, but you're actually trying to get more edge. we want to have more edge. i think copenhageners want more edge. to be honest and frank, we've had some neighbourhoods that have become too polished, too nice, too gentrified, and they're often boring. and you don't want a boring city. you want a city where you can grow in, where you can develop, where you can live your life, and that is edgy. because lives are edgy. so i think it's good for the city to give a little back and to say: "yeah. let's give up control and let people develop their own lives just the way they want to."

so one thing is that the harbour is now clean enough to actually swim in, and the other thing is that it's actually legal. it was illegal for many years, and more spots are opening up where people can jump in the water. the people have spoken and the city follows their lead. ready? who's doing the countdown? felix does the countdown. 4...3...2...1! welcome to copenhagen. one thing that sets copenhagen apart from other bicycle-friendly cities is cargo bikes. we have 40 000 cargo bikes in daily use in this city. 26% of all families with two kids or more have a cargo bike. this is the copenhagen version of the suv. so filming the life-sized city in copenhagen, of course, it's going to take place on cargo bikes.

you can see we have all these different bikes for the crew. one for the gear that we can lock, we have a rickshaw to film from. everything we need is right here on all of these wheels. that is as copenhagen as you're going to get. - you may think, as many do, that cycling has always been a part of copenhagen's dna. no way. in the 1950's and 60's, this city was just as car-clogged as anywhere else. it was in the 1970's and 80's, during the oil crises, that the environmental movement along with a few controversial road projects sparked a real revolution. citizens united in protest, demanding a different model in which walking and biking would be as important as cars and public transport. and eventually, the government listened. now, the latest numbers show that 43% of all trips to work or school are on bikes, and only 25% by car.

people here don't ride bikes to save the planet. in a recent survey, only 7% of copenhageners say they use a bike because of environmental reasons. but 53% of cyclists said they did it because it's just faster and more convenient. plain and simple. to make a point, and i like to make points, let's test things out with a simple trip from norrebro, a residential neighbourhood, to the city centre where most people work. first by bike, then by car. to help me out, i've brought along my good friend marie kastrup, head of the city's bicycle program. this is the busiest bicycle street in the world. over 40 000 people on bikes. how many cars do you see in the morning rush hour? because i can't see very many at all on this street here. so, in the busiest hour between 8:00 and 9:00, which is right now, we counted 450 cars and 3 900 bikes.

when the city of copenhagen started taking the bikes seriously again, what did they do? right. well, the core of it is not rocket science. it's this thing we're riding on right now. right. it's a separated bicycle track, separated by a curb. one of the newer additions to this basic infrastructure is signal optimization. this street, we've set the traffic signals so that if you bike at 20 kilometres per hour, which is a little bit above the average speed, which is at 16 kilometres an hour, you get a green wave. you don't get to stop at all the intersections. we prioritize the bicycle traffic in the rush hour traffic. - the amazing thing about this bicycle infrastructure network is that it covers the whole city. not just the city centre or a few popular neighbourhoods. there are 1 000 kilometres of cycle tracks in greater copenhagen. 1 000. you could basically

go anywhere and everywhere on a unidirectional protected bike lane separated from cars. the city of copenhagen is unrivalled in its collection of data. you guys just collect everything. one way that we usdata is to monitor the development. are we doing good enough? so we have a long list of satisfaction points that we measure continually. we've been doing so in the last 20 years. on average, 97% of copenhageners feel satisfied with copenhagen as a bicycle city, but for bicycle parking, for example, only 37% are satisfied. so that gives us a hint as to where we should focus our energy in the future. so, really, you're engaging the citizens, which copenhagen seems to have a very good tradition for. but it's not to say that everything is for free and everything can be done. it's to see where wehould really prioritize. - right. to have a transparent data set to communicate.

this is really where the need is the most urgent. all right. here we are. the moment of truth: 18 minutes and 12 seconds by bike. but now, we have to try the car. start. all right, let's go. - let's go. i'm never in a car in copenhagen. actually, i calculated that my kids spend about five hours a year in a car in our own city. and i think that me, it's even less than that, right? i might sound incredibly calm as i speak, but i'm freaking the hell out here. what does the city of copenhagen have planned to reduce the number of people arriving in the city by car? of course, we can't do everything by bike,

but we see that when we construct super cycle highways connecting copenhagen with surrounding municipalities, the average trip distance is 14 kilometres on the super cycle highways. right. so people are actually willing to go quite far on a bike if the conditions are ok. right. we're trying to find parking now. we've kind of arrived. when we rode our bike to the destination, we were there. we just hopped off the bikes and we had arrived. oh, there's no turn. oh my god. no left turn, no right turn. on google maps, it said i could turn right there. now, there are bikes. can you see any bikes? no. o.k. oh, pedestrians. i forgot about them. is that parking? can i park there? all right. is there a car behind me? no? o.k. parallel parking. awesome. how is that going? how is that working out for me? i got a beep. all right. i think that's a parking job. you did it!

24 minutes. the bicycle wins. - the pedestrian streets that define this city weren't initially conceived for a car-free way of life. take stroget street for example. it stretches over more than a kilometre through the heart of copenhagen. it's actually one of the world's longest pedestrian streets. it was flooded with cars until a two-year pilot project to pedestrianize it started in 1962. it was a massive success and copenhagen never looked back. the street has been closed to cars ever since, and the pedestrian street network in the city centre has expanded exponentially. initially met with a "no cars means no business" attitude, it has become the busiest shopping street in the city. i sat on this street for one year every

tuesday and every saturday to see what the rhythm of the city was. then, we started, and we were the first city in the world to have documentation about how people use the city. and that humanistic approach has had a major influence on the planning of copenhagen. and that's one of the reasons why copenhagen is referred to as one of the most livable cities in the world. - it would be inconceivable to create an episode of this series about copenhagen without spending time with jan gehl. his vision and his impact on the city are key to its successes. but what makes him a true urban hero is the influence he has had on people around the world, pushing them to rethink cities on a human scale. moscow, san francisco, sao paulo, istanbul, mexico city, melbourne... his fingerprints are on major transformations all over the planet. and the pedestrianization of times square in new york?

yep. that was him too. what is wonderful about a city like copenhagen is we have many different types of pedestrian areas, and also semi-pedestrian areas. they have improved the pedestrian situation continuously for more than 50 years. the first 20 years was about inviting people to walk by making pedestrian streets and pedestrian priority streets. then came the period where people wanted to sit and enjoy. and that was when the squares were cleaned of parked cars and when we started to use the public spaces for cultural events. then comes a third period, where we are now, when the new spaces are very much geared towards being active. you should make cities so that you invite people to walk and bike as much as possible. they live seven years longer. they have a much better life. and we know that if you invite people to drive cars

by making more roads, you get more traffic. if you make nice places, they come. they use them. - that's what we want. we are walking animals. we're social walking animals. what about gentrification? this seems to be one of the greatest challenges that we're facing. how does the human scale tackle that? many people will say that because we made copenhagen so nice, all the prices... the market has made the prices go up, and then the poorer people have been pushed further out, which is completely correct. but i will not accept that as planners and urban designers, we shall make the city as bad as we can so that the rich people go away and the poor sods can come back.

there are two things we can do. one is to make many more places good, so that everybody can live in some places that are very nice. and the other thing is that this kind of gentrification problem with the market prices going up, that has to be solved politically. just at this moment, copenhagen is not so good at it, and it's dropped from number one in the livability rating to number six for that very reason. so we will have to do something with the prices of housing and make sure that they are affordable. that's very important to have a lively and interesting city that has a good mixture. - and the city is actively working to solve this problem. in 2015, the national government gave municipalities the right to impose that 25% of all new building projects be built as affordable housing. copenhagen, of course, seized the opportunity and made it an official rule. but even that isn't enough.

studies show that from 2013 to 2017, the average price of a home increased by more than 35%, while only 30% of the housing in the city is owner-occupied, the national average is 60%. the rising housing market puts enormous pressure on rental prices. as copenhagen struggles to create space for its citizens, i've noticed that some architects are redefining how architecture is practiced and used. hey, democratizing city design could eventually create a more inclusive city. jeanette and her team at arki_lab, an interdisciplinary design studio, are broadening the scope of their discipline. they want to design spaces not just for the people, but also with the people. and the first step towards that, easy: get the kids on board. we are surrounded by architectural design our whole lives. but none of us are ever taught about that.

it's not about kids being taught architecture, but it's also being taught about being aware of your surroundings, right? and i think architecture and design class can actually give kids that. they grow up having an experience about being able to shape their surroundings, and i think we need that in our future, to create active citizens. - arki_lab has conducted a series of workshops with local schools to help kids rethink their built environment. they want to see how children react to a new setting. today, the kids of norrebro park school, helped by my daughter lulu-sophia, have to create an outdoor classroom. outside the school, you can start from scratch. what a great way to learn the basics of design! when we start asking what they need outside, you can also see what they're doing, they need a table and chairs, then they need a board, then they need some walls and then they need a roof. so they're actually taking their classroom and putting it outside. - yeah. and that's because that's what they connect with, in a learning situation.

that's what learning is. so it's also about re-understanding your idea of where you learn something. what are you building here, lulu? we're trying to build a table and some chairs. table and chairs. and a house. - good idea. inside your greenhouse. - we're inside the house, right? yeah, good. - yeah, this is the... - yeah, we got the lines. what can you learn inside a greenhouse? yeah! - oh, yeah. so you're having math while growing your foo and preparing your food? - yeah. what are you guys doing? you're building sort of a slide. - slide, yeah. yeah, cool. what are you building? a maze? before they go into the classroom area, they would have to go in the maze. yeah? so maybe they won't even get into their teaching class. i don't know if i like the idea. that's good thinking. that's creative.

that's cool. - that's clever. fold-out classroom. how do you take this very simple and amazing concept and scale it up? challenges of our world today are complicated. we cannot only solve them from one chair. we have to think horizontally. empower the population and create a community while building your physicals around as well. so i think it's very scalable. people in power have to realize the benefits from it. the financial benefits, the health benefits, the social benefits from actually inviting people into the dialogue about how our city should be shaped in the future. - at 7,6%, the ratio of people living under the poverty line here is quite low. mexico city and cape town, for the sake of comparison, are both somewhere around 40%.

poverty does exist in copenhagen, but being branded as one of the world's most livable cities sadly makes most people forget about it. this is why martin and his crew want to create public spaces that include tho citizens who find themselves on the margins of society. we are building basically an extension of the bench right here. the idea of this extension is that it should hold a stepladder... - o.k. ... because those poles here are going to hold a sail, a piece of fabric, so people who use this plaza have something to shield them from the sun or from the rain. - the team from out of office architecture has collaborated with a social worker and a group of people who hang out in this small park in order to create this simple shelter. many of those using this space are dealing with poverty, homelessness, alcoholism, mental illness, or other social issues. they gather here year-round, rain or shine, warm or cold. we don't really believe that good architecture

can only be made inside an office, so we started talking with people. then we got a design to show them and we're building it together. i think with the interaction with the people, we find the best design solutions. so over here, you have a municipal playground. you have a densely populated neighbourhood and people going through. what has been the reaction when youhowed up and started creating this space? well, that's actually the reason why we are here this year, because we did an iteration last year and there have been no complaints at all. they just sit out here, drink a beer and enjoy their little community. you can't really "remove them", so to speak. then, they would just sit in another place. of course, we could have placed this thing on the backside where nobody would see them and stuff like that. but actually, this project here is right in the middle of the park. you can see it from everywhere, and placing them here also makes it visible for the broader society that we have these social problems or issues, so to speak. so people actually know that they exist, that they are sitting here. and on some level, also, that is ok. it will actually also force drug dealers away. so you have eyes on the street.

you have people taking care of this place. they will sweep after themselves with a broom... they will take out the trash. so that one goes over there. click it there. the municipality has a requirement, that it's taken down every night and put up the next morning. then, when they have taken it down, they can fold it very nicely and easily and they can place it inside the bench. but of course, it's to include them in the design, include them in the ideas, include them in the construction, but also give them a responsibility of taking down the sail every night. that, of course, enhances their ownership a lot, d they really like it. really like it. every time i talk with them, they're like: "this is so cool that we can have this. we don't really mind doing this, because if that means we can have a sail and we can have a shelter, that's perfect."

climate change is wreaking havoc in cities all over the world, with a depressing array of climactic events. in copenhagen, patterns are already starting to emerge. milder winters, but also torrential rain, intense cloudbursts that our sewage system simply cannot handle. enter the sponge city. this is hans tavsens park. in a couple of years, this will be completely redeveloped and act as a reservoir, an amazing place for the citizens to hang out in. when it rains, the water will be filtered in here, and it will slowly seep away or be channelled down to the lakes. there are many of these parks around the city. massive investment is being made. the city of copenhagen is trying to stay ahead of the curve. - public spaces are the backbone of this city. they're used by just about everyone. but it can be hard to move around for the elderly with reduced mobility, especially those living in care homes.

in 2012, a project was created to change that: cycling without age. the volunteer-based organization first spread throughout denmark, and has now found its way all over the world. pernille joined cycling without age when she lived in singapore, where she implemented the program. she's now back in copenhagen and coordinating the organization's international members. the idea is that everybody in copenhagen used to cycle and still do, and when they go to a nursing home, which most elderly people do in denmark, there are a lot of activities that happen inside of the nursing home, which is great. but we also want those people living in nursing homes to experience something that they used to do, and which is a big part of their identity. and for us, cycling is a huge part of our culture. it's an activity that allows people to go outside of their nursing home and to feel kind of young again, get their senses stimulated,

meet new people, interact with the community and just have fun. better lives. - today's passengers are lorna and jorgen, both 89 years old and eager to enjoy the city on this sunny day. lorna, when did you come to denmark from india? in 1956. when you arriv, did you learn how to ride a bike and did you use a bike? yes, i learned how to use it. what about you, jorgen? do you have a bike now? yes! but with three wheels. do you enjoy these bike rides? of course, i do. it's very interesting and you see much more. and you can feel more, you know? the volunteers that come, who are they? we invite everybody to be volunteers, and we call them pilots. actually, we believe it's an equal relationship, and if we talk about volunteering and volunteering your time, we feel the passengers,

in a way, also volunteer their time. but it can be anyone. it can also be family members of the people living in the nursing home, or it can be the staff themselves, and it can also be people that come from the outside that don't know the residents yet. we also work with some schools, so young people like felix, they can get to know the older generation. i think we can all agree that it's important for, let's say felix's generation... - yes. ... to connect with your generation. yeah, yeah. but is it also important the other way around? do you find it interesting to meet the young people? yes. ok. very much. - yeah. very much. - they keep us young. - it's clear that an idea like this could only originate in copenhagen, where bikes and cargo bikes are a part of everyday life, and where trust generally defines human relations. complete strangers sharing a bike ride doesn't seem crazy for one bit in this city. what is the actual effect on the elderly who participate in the program? we have found that people who go on regular rides like this,

they use less medication, they have a better appetite, they sleep better, so it's actually very effective, and in a way much better than medicine. do you find that it combats loneliness as well? it absolutely does. both the passengers build relationships with each other, and they also build relationships with the pilot who is driving them. there's actually research that shows that the most dangerous thing to old people is loneliness, and loneliness itself, of course, causes bad physical health. we can actually tackle loneliness. we can tackle loneliness. wow. and it's for free. - and it's free. yeah, it is. how many chapters do you have around the world now? how far has this spread? it has spread to 41 countries. 41! yes. so we're taking over the world. it's really proven that it appeals to a lot of different cultures and cities all over the world. it's a growing interest. we're in a way changing or challenging the mindset a little bit of elder care.