Cities for People - Jan Gehl new IFHP special advisor

We are thrilled to announce Jan Gehl as special advisor to IFHP.

During his entire career, Jan Gehl has worked to foster more focus on people in urban design. The central questions are always: What makes people thrive? How can we plan and build cities that support human beings’ natural inclinations and foster healthier living, and how does design enhance people’s chances of thriving in their cities, in the spaces where they live, work and study?

Even under the current pandemic induced extraordinary conditions, Jan’s focus remains on people and how they thrive in cities – how we adapt, how we are resilient, and how we can learn from the new habits during corona-shutdowns and improve city design post-corona. He recently gave an interview in the Monocle on this topic.

With IFHP’s focus on better cities for all people, Jan Gehl’s role as special advisor to IFHP seems a perfect match. Together with the IFP global community, Jan’s vast experience and valuable guidance will help boost the joint journey towards life in more sustainable cities.

Upon his accepting the new role, Jan Gehl says: “I am delighted to be able to give impetus to this important agenda of cities for people, for all people. IFHP’s focus rhymes so well with the topics central to my endeavors: making cities for people. We need to share examples of cities with good people-centered solutions, models that work well, to inspire other cities in similar situations.” 

Photo by Max Berger on Unsplash

Through his career, Jan Gehl has collected and analyzed data first hand: he has not only spent time in the streets and squares, seen how people actually use spaces, learnt from that, and used it actively in his work – he has also influenced more than a whole generation of architects and urban planners in focusing on the human scale, the human perspective. With Jan’s apt facilitation, many an urban professional’s gaze has been directed to the space between buildings, to noticing what makes humans enjoy spaces and places in cities, and to focus on how to create environments that foster people’s pleasure at engaging with each other and their cities.

Jan tells the story of the origin of this perspective being his life partner: as a young architect of the time, his focus was naturally trained to appreciate the esthetics of buildings, preferably from a bird’s eye view. His spouse, a psychologist, would ask where the people were in his work, giving impetus to a shift in focus. He also credits the “grandmother of humanistic planning”, the American Canadian journalist, author and activist Jane Jacobs, who called for more respect for the needs of city-dwellers in urban planning.

We look very much forward to the first opportunity to invite IFHP members to meet our special advisors.