Welcome to this document! As the quote to your left indicates, this strategy is about‘ daring’. Over the 200 years since his birth in Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard continued inspiring, far beyond his own age and regions, to always continue the careful search( and struggle) for finding a good way forward. Indeed, these paths are not given, but rather require us to constantly sense and re-perceive, unfold our ideas, sharpen our arguments, and dare to try out something different than‘ the usual’. In this sense, we hope that Søren Kierkegaard would have liked this document, as it is exactly about this carefully finding the way forward, in order to gather transformative power for tackling the problems our society faces with today’ s mobility systems.
Welcome to this document! As the quote to your left indicates, this strategy is about‘ daring’. Over the 200 years since his birth in Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard continued inspiring, far beyond his own age and regions, to always continue the careful search( and struggle) for finding a good way forward. Indeed, these paths are not given, but rather require us to constantly sense and re-perceive, unfold our ideas, sharpen our arguments, and dare to try out something different than‘ the usual’. In this sense, we hope that Søren Kierkegaard would have liked this document, as it is exactly about this carefully finding the way forward, in order to gather transformative power for tackling the problems our society faces with today’ s mobility systems.
When Københavns Kommune introduced Nordhavnen in the successful application for European’ s Environmental Capital 2014 as a“ green laboratory- the blueprint for green growth”, an exquisite idea was born; an idea, which might elevate the future Nordhavnen to be a unique quarter. We picture Nordhavnen of 2050 to be a place, where creativity is in the air. Where the‘ urban vibrancy’, that city planners around the world try to inject into their concepts, has made it into reality. A diverse, colourful quarter, where people from different ages, backgrounds, and with different occupations and interests live together, sharing elements of their rich cultures in their neighbourhood. This might be due to the magnetic force the innovative Nordhavnen had on creative people and companies from all around the world. And then there are the many visitors, Danish and from foreign countries. Among them, urban professionals, wandering through the streets, discussing and seeking for inspiration to take back home to their own cities. The more north the guide takes them, the more their eyes are glowing. Due to the phased implementation of Nordhavnen, innovative urban mobility concepts were taken a step further in every phase, with continued high ambitions. On the way some risks were taken, some painful lessons had to be learnt. But it was worth it! Nordhavnen has performed the tough job of paddling upstream, breaking with constraining lock-ins; and became the central seedbed to shift Copenhagen’ s mobility regime towards being one of the most sustainable and most inspiring ones in the world.
So the time is right, the idea is good, what is missing is a clear strategy of how to work with Nordhavnen as a living laboratory for mobility solutions. This is where this document comes into play. It offers a two-folded strategy: one working on the level of getting to a transformative operation strategy of the living lab, the other one on how to work with one innovative mobility solution in a strategic way. The next three pages give an insight about how we picture the living lab in Nordhavnen to look like and how this document can help to work towards it.
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