Dreams On Wheels

Denmark’s Ambassador to Japan, Franz-Michael S. Mellbin, breaks away from the peloton to promote COP15 and Danish cycling culture in Japan. He will be joined by thousands of Japanese people. The Tour starts in Tokyo on May 23rd and will end in Copenhagen on June 14th.

The last stage in Japan will finish in Kyoto, which gives name to the current climate protocol that hopefully will be replaced with a Copenhagen Protocol, hence the Tour’s tagline: From Kyoto to Copenhagen.

“The message to the Japanese people is that all of us can actively contribute to the environment and combating climate change”, says Ambassador Mellbin. Among the thousands of participants expected to join the ambassador are several well-known politician and other celebrities. Together they will send a message to the world leaders gathering in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Conference, COP15.

The Tour starts in Tokyo and ends up in Kyoto. In between 7 cities scattered throughout Japan will host stages. From Kyoto the Ambassador will carry a message from the participants to Copenhagen, where the final stage will take place on June 14th. June 14th is also “Great Cycling Day”. The stage in Copenhagen is organized jointly with The Danish Cycling Federation.

The Dreams on Wheels exhibit, which is a tool for promoting urban sustainability, is playing an active part in the tour. The exhibit presents urban scenes from Danish cities, including the Danish capital Copenhagen. The exhibit, which is curated by Etikstudio for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, is displayed in both Tokyo and Kyoto.

“Japanese people are very interested in the climate debate and much is said and written about it, but Japan lacks the grass root tradition we have in Denmark”, the Ambassador says. With the COP15 Cycling Tour, we take the lead and offer all Japanese people a concrete chance to act according to their beliefs, and show support for the environment.

At the goal area an expected crowd of 30.000 people will have the opportunity to learn about the Danish approach to the climate issue, and how Danish companies approach it. There will also be press activities targeted at maximizing exposure in Japanese media.

For more information, please have a look at the homepage COP15 Japan.

Press release from Embassy of Denmark, Japan of the 30 April 2009

Back to travel schedule

Jan Gehl’s urban quality firm Gehl Architects, which he founded with Helle Søholt in 2000, is the world’s leading urban space planning company.

With 40 years of practice, Gehl has now transformed Copenhagen’s city centre into a bustling and lively pedestrian strip where shopping and entertainment go hand in hand with playfulness and environmental consciousness. Melbourne, London and now New York have also called upon the firm to help improve urban quality and re-emerge from the “car invasion”. Gehl’s methodology is unique and sharp and is anchored in statistical and sociological analysis.

Learn more through the Exhibit !

ABOUT GEHL ARCHITECTS : RESEARCH AS FOUNDATION

The work and further research of Gehl Architects is based on Jan Gehl’s four decades of extensive research carried out at The School of Architecture, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The research is the basis of worldwide urban quality consultancy and reflects Gehl Architects’ viewpoint that working in the public realm requires a multi-disciplinary approach, as the field of work encompasses not only architecture and planning but also psychology, anthropology and sociology to truly understand how people experience and use the city.

Life - Space - Buildings

Gehl Architects believe that a good city is one where attention is paid to human scale city planning. A city should open up, invite and include people, having different activities and possibilities and thereby ensuring multiplicity and diversity. To achieve this, design solutions are based on the close relationship between people’s natural use of the public space and the physical character and form of the built environment. Their design solutions begin with formulating a vision and comprehensive programme based on the type of life - its activities and attractions - that is inherent in a given area. The next step is to develop a public space network that can support public life through scale, form and climate. Finally we envision how buildings can contribute to our aspirations for public life in terms of height, massing and scale as well as their functions and interaction with the public realm.

Jan Gehl, b.1936

Jan Gehl is an Architect and Professor of Urban Design at the School of Architecture at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He is also the founding partner of Gehl Architects –Urban Quality Consultants. His research on public spaces and public life began in Copenhagen,but was quickly applied to many other cities in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. His ideas and approaches to design for public spaces incorporate the cutting edge of technology without losing sight of what best supports and enhances people’s experience of everyday life in the public realm. In 1992, he received an honorary doctors degree from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. In 1993 he won the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize - for exemplary contributions to Town Planning and Territorial Development from the International Union of Architects, and in 1998 he received the EDRA/Places Research Award from the Environmental Design Research Association, USA. Jan Gehl is a Honorary Fellow of RIBA, The Royal British Institute of Architects, of AIA, American Institute of Architects and RAIC, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Gehl’s publications include Life between Buildings, Public Spaces- Public Life, and New Urban Spaces, which have been translated into multiple languages.