Jan Gehl is one of the most recognized professionals in urban planning who seeks to give greater importance to public spaces in urban life and, in addition, has put his principles of sustainable urban planning into practice in different urban plans. His book, The humanization of public space, is the best synthesis of his ideas (also updated with the book he has just published, relitino y forplener”) an extensive interview published in The Dirt goes over some interesting concepts, mainly about how winning the urban space that we have been ceding to the car in the design of cities and certain urban design solutions that can help revitalize cities.
Days later, Yorokobu he published an interview that we can read in Spanish in quite depth with him. It is worth reading the interview as he reviews concrete examples of actions – in which he has been directly involved on many occasions – to redesign public spaces and thus understand the role that these spaces play in creating urban environments on a human scale.

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One of his best-known interventionshas to do with Copenhagen, in whose transformation of its public spaces has had a lot to do with successive projects in different areas of the city.

Jan Gehl: 3 Qualities of the sustainable city from Sustainable Cities&#x2122 ; on Vimeo.
Gehl Architects have also had a lot to do with the significantcitizen space recovery initiatives at New York, both in Times Square and in the rearrangement of traffic in the adjacent streets and the introduction of a network of bike lanes, within a broad pedestrianization project called Green Light for Midtown . In this city, by the way, there is an interesting case of political leadership taking place by the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who is driving these initiatives and others with the support of groups traditionally very active in these issues and angry and bizarre attacks from some of the city’s political commentators . Here you can find an interview with her in which she explains the reasons for this commitment to friendlier streets in a city like New York:


Transforming the Streets of New York: A Conversation with Janette Sadik-Khanfrom Streetfilms on Vimeo.
Image taken from evaluation report from the project Green Light for Midtown.