Liveability of Copenhagen

What are the determining factors that influence the quality of life in Copenhagen, Denmark?

This is the question that we as a group chose to research on our Sustainability research trip. We had some free time to explore Copenhagen on the Sunday we arrived in the city. During this time we took the opportunity to roam the streets and immerse ourselves in the city of Copenhagen. We noticed how easy it was to travel around the city by bike, on foot and on public transport and we found it to be very comfortable, safe and liveable. This topic was something that all four of us were interested in exploring so we decided to delve into the topic of liveability in Copenhagen, resulting in the following research project.

One of the first things we noticed as we were walking around Copenhagen was the vast amount of bike lanes and all of them occupied with cyclists. The cyclists ranged from adults going to work, children going to school, tourists on bike tours and people running daily errands, like going shopping. On Monday morning we went on a bike tour and we experienced what it was like to cycle around Copenhagen. Copenhagen has 385km of cycle lanes and building safe cycling infrastructure is one of their priorities in relation to sustainability. Cycling through Copenhagen was rather simple and not stressful and it was the traffic calmed streets, painted bike lanes, separated cycle tracks and green waves that helped to achieve that.

Our sustainability issue focuses on the factors that influence the quality of life in Copenhagen, particularly pertaining to urban society. We did this because Copenhagen is certainly leading the way in sustainable growth and we wanted to understand the perspectives of those living in Copenhagen on the liveability of the city. Although our research was limited, we were able to extract depth and answer our question.

The perspective of our group coming into this trip was mixed. Niklas and Will had been to Copenhagen before, so they had an already set perception of the city, whilst it was Niamh and Conor's first time. This allowed us to develop our hypothesis and consequently, our project, on a mix of perceptions and approaches which we believe allowed us to easily go forward and set our project apart from the rest. Our outlook and perspectives come from our time and experience growing up in and around Dublin with intimate knowledge of the inadequacies presented to it as a major European capital.

Using a myriad of quantitative and qualitative data methodologies we developed a mixed-method approach. These included interviews, surveys and data analysis. In hindsight, we would have used a larger and more diverse sample size. However, for the preliminary stage of our research, and the data we collected, we were still able to answer our question; What are the determining factors that influence the quality of life in Copenhagen, Denmark?

We wanted to know what factors influence the quality of life, and with Denmark considered to be one of the happiest countries in the world, we thought this was the perfect environment to create a research project to find out what factors contribute to a high quality of life.

With this approach, we created an ArcGIS survey that allowed us to record our survey and interview responses; with the future ability to create an interactive map, thanks to the collection of coordinates the app took when completing the survey. We had 8 questions, ranging from how long the interviewees had lived in Copenhagen, how they commute in the city, their occupation and their opinion on whether they think the city is liveable. The latter question gave us an opportunity to delve into why they gave a certain response and seemed to be the most meaningful aspect of the survey, as it pertained directly to our research question.

Using the ArcGIS survey, we broke down the key components in an urban environment that our preliminary analysis showed had a positive effect on the quality of life. As we discussed above, this ranged from questions about what they thought of the cycling infrastructure, the implementation of green spaces and why they thought Copenhagen was such a 'liveable' city.

We found that 100% of the surveyors were in favour of the green spaces and thought that the bike lanes and infrastructure were beneficial to the city. One imperfection we found in our surveys was that all respondents were students, unfortunately, international ones. The only outlier in our survey was a middle-aged Danish man outside the Station headquarters, and the other Danish people we tried to interview ignored or could not perform the survey due to one reason or another. We were able to expand the qualitative data outside of the survey questions with a general conversation with the interviewees, asking them about the biggest difference between their hometown and Copenhagen, with most bringing up that the work-life balance here is excellent. One American interviewee mentioned that the lifestyle culture is almost the opposite in the United States, where everyone is always busy and seems to have an unhealthy work-life balance.

There was a clear consensus from the answers to this question that generally, people in Copenhagen, or at least our demographic of young students, are content with the number of green spaces located around the city. This is not surprising, as 80% of the population of Copenhagen inhabitants are believed to live within 300 metres of a green area – one of the highest in Europe (Cömertler 2017, p.5). 'Copenhageners' seem to take pride in this and rightfully so; green spaces are linked with improved public physical and mental health (Wolch et al. 2014, p.235; Wood et al. 2017, p.66)

According to the Sustainable Development Report Denmark, satisfaction with public transport was 73% in 2021, which is the second highest in Europe with Austria being first (Sachs, et al., 2022). An adequate public transport system directly contributes to the ease of access in a city which coincides with liveability, “ease of travel is one of many liveability factors that could impact community quality of life” (Mattson, et al., 2021).

Only one respondent used their car to commute. Physical characteristics linked to neighbourhood satisfaction include the proximity to the main city centre, local amenities, open public spaces, green spaces, and lack of traffic (Mouratidis & Athena, 2022). It is clear that people in  Copenhagen prefer to cycle or use public transport then use their cars. The lack of cars in the city of  Copenhagen increases ease of access and reduces traffic congestion, these two are attributes of a liveable city. With the information we gathered from our survey it is clear why Copenhagen was ranked the second most liveable city in Europe according to the annual report published by The  Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).  

These findings align with our hypothesis that within a city, the green and functional spaces where communities are able to engage in are extremely important. The sustainable transport infrastructure (especially the bike lanes) create environments that implore better work-life balances. These are all key factors that determine the liveability of cities.

References:

Cömertler, S. (2017) ‘Greens of the European Green Capitals’, IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci.Eng., 245(5), p.5 [online]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320862240_Greens_of_the_European_Green_Capitals [date accessed: 28/10/2022].

Mattson, J. et al., 2021. Transportation, community quality of life, and life satisfaction in metro and  non-metro areas of the United States,. Wellbeing, Space and Society, 2(100056), pp. 1-9. 

Mouratidis, K. & Athena, Y., 2022. What makes cities livable? Determinants of neighborhood  satisfaction and neighborhood happiness in different contexts,. Land Use Policy, Volume 122, pp. 1- 5. 

Wolch, J.R., Byrne, J. & Newell, J.P. (2014) ‘Urban green space, public health, andenvironmental justice: The challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 125, pp.234-244 [online]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204614000310?via%3Dihub [date accessed 28/10/2022].

Wood, L., Hooper, P., Foster, S., Bull, F. (2017) ‘Public green spaces and positive mental health – investigating the relationship between access, quantity and types of parks and mental wellbeing’, Health & Place, 48, pp.63-71 [online]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1353829216303689 [date accessed: 28/10/2022].