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by Helene Vacher (Author)
A wealth of innovations and urban representations have been accumulated through town planning competitions. Such contests have also mediated social ethos and professional practice to respond to pressures for change in the built environment. Presenting a detailed record of the town planning competition for Copenhagen, this book explores many different approaches to cope with the temporal character of urban change. In doing so the book throws new light on the Civic Art stream of design in Europe that echoed with the National Romantic movement in Denmark. The first section is devoted to the 31 participants, who represented a cross section of the professional milieu in the Nordic countries, and especially examines the contribution of the German surveyors to town planning. An examination of the graphic documents submitted for the competition forms the basis of the second part of the book, which analyses how the different entries deal with conservation, landscaping and city architectonic issues. Colour plans and drawings are reproduced and commented. Finally Helene Vacher examines alternative values underlying conservation lobbies and activities competing for the historicity or the enhancement of the 'old city' emerging as the core of Great Copenhagen. Seeking to show how town planning competitions can be investigated as a narrative of urban history, this book is not only for those with an interest in planning history, urban geography, conservation in terms of planning, environmental, social and cultural policy, professionalisation in planning, but also for those with a general interest in the city of Copenhagen.
