New Agenda 2: – Danish Landscape Architecture 2009-13 (Ebog, epub, Engelsk)

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New Agenda 2 presents creative solutions for stemming torrential rainstorms and surplus water surges which have flooded basements and filled them with sewage sludge. These solutions relieve the pressure on the sewage system, which would be to costly to adapt to extreme situations.

The book also demonstrates how landscape architecture benefits public health by developing outdoor spaces where people can exercise. This is an attempt to counter the obesity epidemic which threatens the majority of western industrialised societies, including Denmark. With examples gathered from around the country, the book shows how urban, landscape and water spaces are designed as informal activity spaces that encourage play and exercise.

In addition, the book shows how themes like ‘Cultivate Your City’ together with other citizen involvement projects give residents joint ownership of otherwise public areas. It also demonstrates how the concept of ‘temporality’ is used in a new and promising approach to step-by-step development or transformation of city development areas.

Though a number of new items thus have been added to the agenda, landscape architects still hold on to the virtues that made Danish design known internationally. It is demonstrated in small projects such as the green triangle at Grønningen/Nyboder in Copenhagen or gigantic facilities like the sub-station in Herslev by Kalundborg, which is enclosed by an artificial landscape with 40 hectare of undulating terrain that hides the eyesore from view and provides the area with recreational values. Or large-scale urban projects such as Viborg City Center or the pedestrian street Købmagergade in Copenhagen. Revitalizations and reinterpretations of cultural heritage are particularly well represented with Frederiksborg Palace Gardens, Odense Palace Gardens, various manor gardens, Kronborg etc.