Cities can be inspiring places that bring out the best in us. But they’re often concrete jungles that make us ill and are still designed around the automobile. What if they were places in which you could thrive rather than simply survive? Another model is possible, writes Rasmus Astrup in the December 2024 issue of Monocle.
Like many Danes of my generation, much of my childhood was spent immersed in the world of Lego. The “City” universe was my absolute favourite. I got to play the role of urban God, carefully piecing together my dream metropolis from the ground up.
I had a fire station and an assortment of other buildings but most of my constructions came from my imagination. Gardens were essential, with tiny flowers and soft plastic trees filling the spaces between my buildings.
Even back then, I was obsessed with trees – both in my Lego world and the real one – and I could never have enough.
What I didn’t realise at the time was how much the layout of my pretend city – like so many real ones – was governed by roads. The foundation was always a grid of grey plates, their pre-constructed streets directing the flow of traffic and determining how everything else would fit together. If the roads didn’t connect seamlessly, the city simply wouldn’t work.
The streets dictated everything. That’s how I formed my earliest, unconscious definition of a “real city”.
A few decades have passed since then and I now spend most of my time, in my work as an urban designer, rethinking and challenging what a real city could and should be.
Despite all the energy and creativity they hold, urban environments are also responsible for making us sick. They pollute the air with heavy metals, trap heat in concrete jungles, and surround us with so much noise that our brains and hearts struggle to find rest. Despite being home to most of the world’s population, cities often isolate us more than they connect us.
Let me be clear about one thing: I love cities. I grew up in Copenhagen, and today I live in the heart of the city with my family, right next to a busy road. I thrive on the energy cities provide – the inspiration, the communities, the culture and the innovation.
Cities are where ideas take root and where diverse people come together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. I want my children to experience this richness of life, which is why we’ve chosen to stay in the urban core.
But there are aspects I don’t love: the unrelenting traffic just outside our door and the sheer amount of space dominated by black asphalt, covering roughly 80 per cent of the public area between buildings where I live.
That’s why I began to construct my own little slice of urban life: my garden. When we bought the house, it was nothing but a small parking courtyard. But slowly it evolved into a green oasis. My goal was to create a haven for my family; a place where we could escape the noise and heat of the city. We planted as many trees as we could afford, transforming the area into a biodiversity hub, providing shade, lowering temperatures and absorbing rainwater.
More importantly, we created a sanctuary filled with birds whose loud songs miraculously drown out the cacophony of urban life (city birds actually sing louder than their rural counterparts, nature’s own way of adapting to urban noise).
Our garden isn’t just about greenery, though. We also installed a noise-reducing fence made from poplar bark, a sustainable byproduct of the furniture industry. This fence is as functional as it is beautiful. The bark absorbs airborne pollutants from car exhausts, improving air quality around our home, and provides a natural, tactile material that people passing by can’t help but touch.
The poplar fence panels came from an exhibition by SLA – the studio where I’m design principal – at Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum. Our exhibition focused on the power of trees and nature in cities, a theme I find central not only to my professional life but also to my personal one.
Our fence, like trees, represents a small but impactful act of resistance against the problems urban life can create. Noise pollution, in particular, is a silent killer. It causes stress, disturbs our sleep and contributes to chronic health issues.
The simple act of planting trees and installing noise-reducing materials can transform a space and dramatically improve our quality of life. Cities should not be places where we merely survive —they should be places we truly love.
“The simple act of planting trees and installing noise-reducing materials can transform a space and dramatically improve our quality of life. Cities should not be places where we merely survive —they should be places we truly love.”
— Rasmus Astrup, Partner & Design Principal
At the heart of all my work is a desire to improve life quality — for all life.
Our team includes biologists, architects, landscape architects, planners, lighting designers and anthropologists, working together to design cities that don’t just look beautiful but function in a way that makes life better for everyone.
We’re also challenging the traditional hierarchy of cities, where roads and cars have always taken precedence. While we’re not advocating for their removal, we believe it’s time they stop ruling the urban landscape, where places are often designed around roads. The design of cities needs to change – and urgently.
One of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve had was working closely with indigenous designers in Canada, whose traditional knowledge stretching back for thousands of years offers an invaluable perspective. Their principle of considering the impact of every decision on the next seven generations forces us to think far beyond the short-termism that dominates most modern urban planning. How many recent developments in the city you live in have been designed for two generations after you, let alone seven?
One specific conversation with an indigenous designer left a lasting impression. We were discussing the rather technical term “stormwater management” when he interrupted to suggest we just call it “rain” or “the flow of water that falls from the sky”.
This simple reframing – from technical to nature – shifted my perspective. Everything in nature is about flow, he reminded me – wind, water, energy, even people. And yet, for the past century or so, our cities have been built to disrupt these flows.
This is why Copenhagen was hit so hard by flooding in 2011 (my own basement was submerged, along with thousands of others). And now, even desert cities like Dubai, which once laughed off our rainwater management proposals, are asking for help as they begin to face big water challenges of their own.
Unfortunately, meaningful change in cities only seems to happen when insurance companies and municipalities are forced to act after suffering massive financial losses. But you can’t put a price tag on quality of life. Feeling safe, connected and good are invaluable concepts. Cities should be designed to provide them.
Planting trees is perhaps the simplest and most effective way to improve urban life. Trees change not only the physical environment but also the way people feel and behave in public spaces. Think about where you’d rather spend your day: in a park under a tree or in an asphalt parking lot under a lamppost?
Nature has been proven to lower stress levels, make people feel more at ease, and even encourage social interaction. When we feel connected to nature, we feel more connected to ourselves and, by extension, to others.
My best memory of that is our collaboration with 1,500 Copenhagen students where we helped them transform their 1960s concrete outdoor space into a social and biological corridor. Changing the resident composition of their dorm to include 10% socially disadvantaged individuals, the students took a clear social responsibility by literally inviting their less fortunate peers into their home. They intuitively understood the connection between biological diversity and social equity.
The path forward may be challenging but it’s an exciting one. I believe that we can change the way cities are built and experienced.
As someone who started life literally playing with the concept of what a city should look like, I now find myself working on how to grow them – for us and for future generations.
Cities are often bad for us – but it doesn’t have to be that way.
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