The Danish way
We needed a vacation but didn’t want to go to places we’d been before, so we looked up the cheapest airline tickets to places in Europe. It turned out that Copenhagen was top of the list.
That random selection began a journey that turned out to be one of the best vacations we have taken as a family and an introduction to a way of life that, while not perfect, strived for the right balance.
Sometimes it’s the small things in life, the small acts of kindness that make life worth living and affirm your connection to the culture around you.
Here are three examples to give you a sense of our experience in the city.
Baked good
There is a special policy for children in nearly every bakery we went into in Copenhagen. That policy was to give them a free baked good treat.
It was a little odd at first, but this simple act which could not have cost the bakery more than a few cents was a moment of delight for both our kid, and his parents—it was like being regularly accorded an empathetic understanding of what it means to be a parent with a child in a busy city. Kids get tired quickly and need more food, more often, than you could ever imagine. A free baked good helps all the people large and small in the city stay in balance.
Where did you get that shirt?
We were walking past the national football (soccer) stadium on our way to a park when we heard a voice call out “Nice shirt!” from behind us. We all turned around and saw a middle-aged man wearing a stadium uniform. He said that Mo Salah, the player’s name on the back of my son’s shirt, was one of his favorite players. Without missing a beat the man, whose name was Martin, asked if we would like to take a look at the Stadium!
I have been a football fan my whole life, and my son had caught the football bug from me a while ago. Before we could even reply to this invitation, he was already jumping up and down at the opportunity of looking around Copenhagen FC’s national stadium.
Just like that, Martin opened a large side door in the stadium wall off the sidewalk. We followed him down a corridor that emerged right onto the main pitch. He was preparing it for the first game of the season on the weekend. For the next thirty minutes, he engaged my son (in perfect English) in conversation about the club and the great games that had been played in this stadium and the players he loved to watch. Martin did not have to do this—he must have been pretty busy—but he could understand that this was a simple and very kind way of making someone’s day.
Learning the city
Copenhagen is full of beautiful parks. But there is one extraordinary one. It’s designed for both playing and learning.
On the streets of Copenhagen, there is a complex choreography of pedestrians, cyclists, and cars. To help younger members of the community to understand how that works, the city built a mini-city in the middle of one of its many parks.
Kids from four to twelve can come and borrow a bike or a pedal car for free, or walk around this miniature city. The road signs, traffic lights, and bike paths are all scaled down to kids’ size, so they can practice the skills they need to live in a busy city.
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None of our experiences in Copenhagen by themselves are groundbreaking changes in city life. Still, in combination, they gave my family a sense of belonging to a city we were only visiting for a week. It showed a sense of balance, which was beautiful to experience.
For me, design as a practice is the ability to take ideas or concepts and rearrange them into new patterns and create something new and unexpected. Using this definition, you can see how Denmark is trying to redesign its culture.
Could they, and we, all do more? Eradicate poverty, racism, sexism and create a more equal and fair society? Of course, we could, and must. But it takes a lot of small steps in a run-up to build momentum before a giant leap. Without taking those smaller steps first, we will not leap very far as a culture.
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