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23 Once you travel through the tunnel and reach Otto Busses Vej inside The Railway City, another perceptual problem is being raised, as the tunnel path branches to make alternate paths - towards the main districts and buildings - that are poorly signalized and not intuitive to follow. Unlike the other entrance described above, the pedestrians are those popularly associated with this square – we have observed different patterns of behavior and transition exerted by people (fx. walking their dogs, sitting on a bench nearby and chatting, delivering food on bikes, running, walking together, etc.).
Yellow Town
CPH Village
Districs The Yellow Town appeared, visually, as the core of the image of the city, due to its yellow-brick buildings that appear as you approach the square and Otto Busses Vej. Another interesting district can be found further south on Otto Busses Vej, around 5 minutes away from the Yellow Town: the lively CPH Village student dorm. Built in a way that keeps the visual connection to the surrounding area, the dorm space is of substantial size and, although still under development, can be considered a landmark as well.
Analysis: context
SUMMARY: Our urban analysis opened up for a new vision for The Railway City to become a highly imageable city (legible and visible), that would invite not only its dwellers, but also other people to explore it. Although interchangeable, the urban elements analyzed here showed that they operate together in a context, and it would be interesting to study the characteristics of various pairings, like path-node. As such, greater attention could be given to the tunnel, as a transitional path between The Railway City and the neighborhoods around.
• Creating with light
Figures in the margin denotes areas from fig. 1.9
1.5 Social analysis On our long walks around the city, we not only observed these stationary physical parts of the city and its urban layers, but also paid attention to its moving elements along the way, in particular the people and their activities. Jan Gehl displays a great sociological imagination when it comes to studying the built environment, which we found relevant for this point in the process. Drawing inspiration from his book on “Life between Buildings” (2011), we investigated the types of movement that people were displaying around the City, as well as the way they were spending their time within the City (fig.1.10). According to Gehl, people and human activities attract other people; they move about with others and they seek to place themselves near others (p.23). Our observations showed that most social gatherings were realized in the vicinity of the CPH Village dorm, as well as in the old railway station (Baanegarden), because of the number of local stores and amenities of high interest for the students, locals and people passing by. A high number of people has been observed in the Yellow Town as well, primarily dwellers on a walk with their dogs or commuting from one household to another. Outside of the City, on Enghavevej side, the number of people stationing or temporarily gathering was observed to be rather low, as the path on Enghavevej doesn’t support this behavior. The tunnel, although a physical link between the communities outside and inside of the City, appeared as a disengaging tool between the two, working as a purely functional device of taking people from one place to another. Fig. 1.10: Illustration of people’s activities and the respective place they were conducted in (not statistical, just for visual representation purposes)
