Sep 13, 2024
On a rainy afternoon, Fred and I were outside a bakery, sharing a pastry and an umbrella. A man pulled up in his car, rolled down the window, and shouted, "Take this," handing us an umbrella. We were a little stunned, and Fred blurted out, “…for free?”
This small act of kindness seemed to embody Copenhagen itself.Everywhere we looked, we found beauty married to practicality, progressive values grounded in tradition, all within a high-trust society. From the unassuming modest house of famous designer Finn Juhl, to CopenHill, a waste management plant where people hike and ski, to the The Royal Library, where sleek modernity meets carefully restored history.
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What is this place? Are you telling me Jane Jacobs’s vision of a perfect city actually exists? Why is everyone biking with a smile on their face? Is this the future of humanity?
It’s remarkable to think that just a few decades ago, Copenhagen battled severe industrial pollution, filthy rivers, and choking smog. And yet, it was able to transform itself into one of the most "livable" cities in the world. How is this even possible?
At the entrance of the Danish Design Center, they play a video about the history of Danish design and its role in building a democratic welfare society. “What is democracy?” it asked. It’s about creating a shared understanding, so we can converse with a common context. And that feels so true here. The culture’s trust seems to come from a deeply ingrained sense of shared rules and values—what’s right and wrong.
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One night, we stumbled upon a small wine bar tucked between a trans nightclub and a Thai restaurant. It felt like we had wandered into a friend’s living room rather than a bar.A chef from the restaurant had stopped in to unwind, and as it turned out, many performers/workers from the nightclub would come up to drink during their breaks.
Between jokes about sudden loud explosions (possibly gang-related gunfire one guy said) and jabs at overrated Danish design brands (Hay came up), the conversation shifted to Denmark’s lesser-known histories, specifically, Denmark’s colonial history with Greenland.
It’s a familiar and tragic cycle of colonization. The colonizers stripped away the native cultures (one grim example is the Little Danes experiment). Over time, the harm spiraled, and the natives became abusers themselves, struggling with drug addiction, poverty, and crimes.
Eerily, after that conversation, we began noticing Inuit people everywhere in Copenhagen. Some begging on the streets. Others, often traveling alone, looking disoriented. Once an elderly Inuit woman burst out of a bus and was nearly hit by a cyclist, but she just kept moving forward.