Copenhagen's Finger Plan
Copenhagen, Denmark, 1947 · The idea: grow along the railway lines, and keep green wedges between them.
The problem
After the Second World War, Copenhagen expected to grow fast. Left alone, a city spreads out evenly in every direction, and each new suburb sits further from the centre and from open country.
A young team in the regional planning office, led by the architect Peter Bredsdorff, looked for a shape that let the city grow without losing its fields and woods, with homes, work and green space all a short trip apart by public transport.
Move by move
- 1947 Draw the city as a hand: the old centre is the palm.
- 1947 Let new building run outward along five S-train railway lines, the fingers, so new homes are near a station.
- 1947 Keep the land between the fingers green: farmland, woods and parks reaching close to the centre.
- 1950s The fingers grow thicker than planned, and by 1958 growing car use spreads the city across much of north-east Zealand.
- 2007 Denmark issues Fingerplan 2007 as a national planning directive.
What happened
Many of the green wedges were kept; the large Vestskoven forest was planted as one of them. The original fingers were later treated as the palm of a bigger hand reaching Helsingør, Hillerød, Frederikssund, Roskilde and Køge.
What critics said
- Some point out that cars made the "fingers" leak: people did not always live where the trains ran.
- Others argue that a plan which lasted decades only because it was later written into law shows how fragile a good drawing is without rules behind it.
- Draw a palm and five fingers on a sheet of paper. Take turns placing a new house: it must touch a finger.
- Then play again where houses may go anywhere. Compare how much green is left.
The Honest Page
- Known. The Finger Plan was published in 1947 and directs growth along rail lines with green wedges between them. Source
- Known. It was drawn up by the Egnsplankontoret under Peter Bredsdorff; the fingers thickened from 1951; Fingerplan 2007 is a national planning directive. Source
- Argued about. How closely growth followed the plan in the decades before it was binding. Source