Big’s Loop City

By Kang-Hsin Fan

“History plays a different role in landscape architecture than in building or even urban design. As Smith notes, it is a long term enterprise: when a piece of architecture is completed, it begins its decline, when a piece of landscape architecture is done, it is just beginning, It takes time to grow a landscape” (Hubbard, 1995)

Systems shape urban forms. In basic landscape Architecture: Urban
Design, the author states that “cities are composed of interdependent systems
from the city-wide scale such as transport and utilities, to the microelectronic.
They support urban forms and promote opportunities for growth. These urban
systems can create form in the city landscape” (Wall & Waterman, 2010). An
obvious example is the shape of a city founded upon public transport differs
radically from one built to satisfy the needs of the car. In New York City, the
subway system follows the street network with only several feet of structure
separating the road above from the tracks below. Furthermore, “the high-tech
communications now result in clusters of businesses around certain hubs in the
city; free wireless internet in public spaces blurs the separation between office,
library, and public park, while in the future, localized energy production will invent new urban forms for our cities” (Wall & Waterman, 2010). As a result, with these systems and components of a city, they can help to create a specific context for urban design projects that offer great potential for innovations.

Big’s Loop City

In the Big’s loop city case study, it provides methods to build a development of a comprehensive public transport systems and components, and to improve the terrible traffic congestion problem. The result will help to yield a more effective life-place, and deal with pollution and quality of life issues.

According to Big’s Loop City, this project illustrates a new metro loop in the industrial, cross-border region of Copenhagen’s suburbs. It is under the question “how do we tie two countries together in one metropolitan loop?” These industrial areas in the Copenhagen suburbs were early developed and designed as finger plan by Steen Eiler Rasmassen and a group of urbanites in 1947. These industrial areas are next in line for urban development. From finger plan to loop city, it looks at the famous urban planning strategy and aims to maximize connectivity in the metropolitan region by stringing together a number of highly differentiated urban nodes. The new project is planning to build a new light rail to interconnect 20 development zones with a total area of 11 km2. They combine the light rail with strategies for energy exchange, water treatment, waste management, and electric car stations. The infrastructure with the rail could become the base for a new sustainable ring of development around Copenhagen, and an artery of urbanity pumping life into the heart of the suburbs.

Figure: New Plan Linking The Urban Nodes


Source: Big Company