A look at Copenhagen

 

A side street near central Copenhagen
This charming street is quiet, in part because of how many residents use bicycles or walk.

In the spring of 2022, I had an opportunity to spend time in a city I’ve wanted to visit for a long time: Copenhagen.

Like some cities in the Netherlands, Copenhagen reimagined itself to increase bicycling. In the early 1980s, urban planners began designing cycle tracks for the city. The bike paths are well-planned: they’re separate from the pedestrian paths and also from the car lanes. And the bike paths are unidirectional, so the cyclists don’t pass each other in both directions on the same track.

The pedestrian sidewalks do cover both directions, with a clear delineation on the right and left side for which side to walk on. The only exceptions I saw were in construction zones, where job sites encroached on the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians and cyclists into the same path.

There’s a lot that’s already been said about the benefits of bicycle-and pedestrian-friendly cities, and I’ll cite a few examples below. For my part, I observed how these features affected the urban soundscape.

Streets

Most of you who travel already know this, so I’m stating the obvious: many European cities closed some of the streets in their shopping areas to make them pedestrian-only. You see this a lot in central parts of the cities, where buildings are old, streets are narrow, and the bottom floor of the buildings are retail or restaurants. Copenhagen is no exception. Unlike San Francisco, where street closures are intermittent and randomly enforced, these closures are permanent and a part of everyday life.

Reducing car traffic can lower certain types of noise in a city because narrow streets with tall buildings can become inherently louder. These facing buildings create corridor echo. Pedestrians and bicyclists aren’t soundless, but they’re usually not as grating as engine noise.

Closing some streets to cars also increases foot traffic into the shops. People can browse and discover instead of whizzing past in vehicles, where storefronts become a backdrop. Since everyone’s already on foot, there’s nothing stopping them from exploring. They don’t need to look for parking spots first.

Open spaces — like small parks or seating areas for social interaction — also help to reduce noise because there’s less hard, reflective surface for the noise to bounce from. Otherwise, streets with similar tall buildings and hard facades can become noise-and-wind tunnels. I’m interested to know if there’s effective noise mitigation for some of the noise-corridor structures that already exist, like in some Financial Districts.

Public transit

Public transit — especially light-rail systems — helps to reduce noise from cars on the streets. But without sound dampening and maintenance, they can introduce their own noise. In San Francisco, the Muni metro is potentially very quiet. But the metro cars can get very loud inside the tunnels or at major turning points in the neighborhoods. A couple of notable screeching centers are the turns at 9th and Irving Streets in the Inner Sunset district and 30th and Church Streets in Noe Valley. So track maintenance is essential to reducing daily noise, especially the shrieking sounds that impact residents near the tracks.

In Copenhagen, the metro system also has glass doors in each station. They stay closed until a train arrives. This reduces noise from the tracks and it increases public safety. I’ve seen similar doors on other systems, like some of the Paris metro lines and in some airport-terminal transit systems.

Insulation also helps to reduce noise. Regional trains that traveled outside Copenhagen were quiet and comfortable, and many of the lines offered a “quiet car,” where conversation and cellphone talking is discouraged. This can be a relief if you don’t want to be a captive audience to someone else’s mobile phone call for a long journey.

In this six-minute video, I outline some of these topics:

Architecture

This double-paned window and thick wall keeps this Copenhagen apartment quiet and warm.
The combination of a well-made double-paned window and a thick, well-insulated wall keeps this apartment quiet.

Scandinavia obviously has colder winters than a region like California. That’s probably why their buildings are sturdier, with thicker walls and weatherproof/soundproof windows.

Denmark isn’t the only country with such robust structures, of course. I’ve seen similar buildings in countries like Germany, Hungary, and Switzerland. In contrast, the four-inch wood exterior walls of many American buildings can’t hold up long-term against noise or weather. The US has a two-fold problem: the cost of housing and construction is already really high, and the quality is lower. How do you solve this issue? Especially since we need to increase housing density?

Plan for sound

Cities can become a cacophony of jarring noise if urban planners don’t consider sound. European cities with populations over 100,000 are required to create noise maps every few years. They measure and map noise by neighborhood, including terrain and existing structures. These maps can be analyzed before planning significant new structures or roads.

Although it sounds like more “bureaucracy,” soundscape analysis and planning can help to minimize excessive human-generated or machine-generated noise issues that impact health. US cities should do the same.

Learn more

What makes a city less noisy?
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