While our vibrant cities are centres of innovation and of course wealth creation, they also have high levels of pollution – leading to environment and health problems. All of us – including citizens, researchers, urban planners, mayors and teachers – must therefore work together to build healthier cities.
European cities need more green spaces that boost physical activity, reduce stress and freshen the air! Imagine how beautiful our cities could be with better air, less noise, more parks, roof gardens, cleaner transport systems and so on…
Copenhagen is showing the way and aims to be a CO2 neutral city by 2025. Urban planning and strategic policies are at the core of this revolution. Across the city, visitors are greeted by streams of cyclists. In Copenhagen 50% of all citizens commute by bike every day and there are more bikes than inhabitants[i]. Already in 2010, yearly health benefits of cycling in Copenhagen amounted to DKK 1.7 billion or €228 000 000[ii].
An estimated 435,000 cycling-related jobs could be created if 56 major cities across the pan European region were to replicate Copenhagen’s share of cycling as a mode of transport, reveal preliminary findings from a ‘Cycling and green jobs’ study led by UN Environment[iii].
Less visible in Copenhagen are state-of-the-art facilities where waste heat from power plants is used to keep buildings warm via the world's largest district heating network[iv].
These innovations are just a taster of what is planned for the coming years, in a bid to make Copenhagen the world's first carbon-neutral capital by 2025.
If this interests you, find out more on p.42, 43 and 206 in the sixth Global Environment Outlook report for the pan-European region.
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[ii] Copenhagen Bicycle Account 2012" (in Danish), City of Copenhagen, May 2013. Archived from the original on 11 March 2015, http://bit.ly/2gtdIJN
[iii] Cycling can put Green Economy transition in motion – UN Environment Europe June 2016 newsletter, http://bit.ly/297DVsS
[iv] C40 Cities, Copenhagen CPH Plan 2025 http://bit.ly/2fspSjZ
