There's something fishy in Denmark...

http://justpaste.it/3ky

The 5th photo down shows “Suburbs of Copenhagen Denmark”.

What were the city planners thinking here? It doesn’t look like a practical use of the land to me. Maybe I’m just used to the grid system but I’ve never seen a neighborhood look like this.

They aren’t houses. They’re the Danish version of cabins in the woods. We call it an allotment.

I like it better than that picture of Denver.

Why the circular design? Aesthetics or is there a practical application?

Well:

  1. You want the buildings conveniently close to one another; it makes it easier and cheaper to lay on water, power, etc.

  2. Each building has to stand on its own cultivable allotment; hence the long narrow plots.

  3. You could arrange the plots in a straight line, along a road or street, but arranging them like this greatly reduces the amount of land and material that has to be given over to providing paved access to each plot. This saves money, and maximises the ratio of cultivable land to roadway. Plus, arranging them this way ensures that nobody lives on a thoroughfare - a roadway used by traffic en route to somewhere else. This helps to maintain a quiet, peaceful atmosphere around the allotments.

What use, if any, is made of the areas between the circles?

From the picture, it’s fairly clearly managed in some way. Could it be used for grazing, e.g., cattle? Livestock doesn’t greatly care whether its grazing space is a nice regular shape or not.

Google Maps link:

There’s a couple of soccer goals near the middle of the picture, I somehow doubt we’re going to find any cattle in there. :slight_smile:

You clearly haven’t been to some of the places where I’ve played soccer . . .

According to the Danish Wikipedia the landscape architect who came up with the idea of round allotments wanted them to look like old round villages with a well in the middle where people could meet and exchange gossips.

There’s something fishy in Oxford too.

I used to have driving lessons past that house!

Agreed!
though to be fair, the Denmark houses are apparently “summer homes”, not primary residences like the ones in Denver. Denver is a wonderful place, but between the two pictures, there is no contest! :slight_smile:

Thanks to the OP for posting that link. They are wonderful shots.

True, people are allowed to sleep there during the summer season and on weekends the rest of the year (don’t remember the exact dates). I assume the reason for this rule is that the municipality don’t want all year round living with all it carries with it in form of water supply, sewers, electricity etc. There is also a limit to how big the houses are allowed to be.

I wish we’d do more like that here, to conserve greenspace. Contrast with Denver, a few pics below.

There is such a thing as a “conservation subdivision”, where all the houses are clustered together, leaving large open green spaces for common uses. Conservation subdivision design can preserve 50 to 70% of the subdivision’s land area as open space.

More info here. There is a link to photos at the bottom of the page.

Well, they’re both equally vehicle-dependent. Not much improvement there.

I don’t want to post any links, but the area development that I live in has 40% of the land devoted to virgin natural landscape. The remaining 60% has housing on it; lots range from very small up to an acre.

We actually have more wildlife in our area than in the surrounding country side, as there are fewer predators (coyotes and wildcats) and the critters have permanent water available.

It is nice. I see javalina, quail, rabbits and such on a daily basis. Of course we have to adapt to the presence of snakes and tarantulas and such…

Another advantage is that if you have several houses close together, you can put one big heating tank underneath that heats all houses, instead of each house having their own heating tank. This is more efficient (scale), but only if the lines to each house are short, like each house on the inner side of the circle.