[Keynote Session] Designing Cities for People & Planet: From Vision to Impact
Keynote Session
“Designing Cities for People & Planet: From Vision to Impact”
Helle SØHOLT / CEO & Founding partner of GEHL
Introduction
Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and meet you all in Seoul.
Today, I just managed to take a little walk around the area in the rain, and I’m happy that you made me feel so welcome — because it’s always raining in Copenhagen too. So thank you for that.
I’ll be talking about designing cities for and with people, from vision to impact.
And what I’m talking about today is urban design—and how we can design our cities.
About GEHL
Our mission from the very beginning has been to make cities for people. And by that, we mean focusing on equity, on health, and on sustainability for future generations. I started the company together with Professor Jan Gehl when I was 28 years old. Jan was 64 and already had a long academic career as a professor behind him. So, we started the company together, and this year, on the first of May, we celebrated our 25th anniversary.
So, Jan has been retired since 2010, but I’m continuing to lead the organization, focusing not just on people but on all forms of life — really looking at all the life that exists between the buildings. And I was so happy to see, just from the little tour I had this afternoon, that Seoul is also beginning to bring much more greenery and biodiversity into the city. That’s wonderful.
So, over these last 25 years, we have worked in a number of cities around the world. We have offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco, and I’ve assembled a little—well, a small collection of projects—that I will show you today. But I’ll also talk more broadly about the philosophy, you could say, of how urbanism and urban design can connect to a sustainable approach to planning going forward.
And this all ties back to some very old principles.
Maybe some of you are familiar with Professor Jan Gehl’s old book called Life Between Buildings. It came out in 1971, so it's quite an old classic by now, but in this book he introduced the basic principles of how to design public spaces to better support public life.
And public life is really about how we, as human beings, come together—how we connect, build relationships, and socialize. These principles, which sum up to what we call the human dimension or the human scale in cities, are still very much at the core of what we do in our office.
So, our approach is to look at design and urban design from a user’s perspective. We always start by asking: How do people walk? What do they hear? What can they smell? How do they feel invited? But we also go beyond just the physical experience. We look at the social experience—what norms exist, what is being communicated—and we also consider the mental experience: Do people feel safe? What is the mood? What creates attraction?
Today, we have transformed-you could say-many of the methods we started out with back then into digital tools. These tools help engage local citizens, and we can train you and your staff to use these apps to go out and document how people in Seoul are using public spaces. How are the streets being used? What are the walking patterns in the city? And you can use these insights to support your overall strategy for developing a public space plan.
Toward a New Urban Approach
So that was just a little bit of an introduction to how we work—our, you could say, methods. But now, let’s zoom out a little and look at how we can actually plan cities for the future.
Many of us know that by 2050, about 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities. And here in Seoul, actually, the majority of the country’s population already lives in this metropolitan area. So, you are already one of the most highly urbanized places in the world. And when I talk about urban design, I think one of the biggest challenges is to work holistically. By that, I mean looking across all the different modes of transportation and all the departments within the city.
And this is actually one of the most difficult things I find when working around the world—connecting transport planning with cultural planning, with health and well- being—to really make sure that we achieve prosperous and sustainable economic development in cities.
We often try to create cross-departmental project groups in every project we do to ensure this holistic approach. And I believe that this way of working is much more conducive and supportive of, you could say, the urban design approach—making sure that urban design projects actually generate societal outcomes and contribute to broader social goals. That includes looking at social interaction, how communities connect to place, and how health and quality of life are shaped.
And I’ve heard that here in Seoul, you’ve also started to measure quality of life— connecting people to economic opportunities, fostering community engagement, and supporting democracy.
So, all of this ties into what I would call a new— you could say—model for urban planning. We need to move away from the business-as-usual approach, where investments often focus on dispersed infrastructure. That, in many parts of the world, leads to a growing demand for personal cars. And that, in turn, creates behaviors where public spaces are underutilized, which again results in underperformance and a lower place value.
So that needs to be turned around so that we actually start with an infrastructure of connectedness—creating a demand for public transit, like you have here in Seoul, which is so admirable. And that, in turn, leads to vibrancy in public spaces, and again to movement and higher value. So Seoul is already doing a lot of things right, and that is why, as a city, you are on a trajectory to become one of the most livable cities in the world.
But we also have to move away from this conformity.
When it comes to architecture, in many places we see a tendency toward increased safety, increased comfort, and greater opportunity—often within very low-density environments. And this can go both ways: in very high-density areas with tall towers, as you can see here from some examples in Dubai, but also in very spread-out, low- density areas—which, fortunately, you don’t have so much of here in Seoul—but we see them in America and in parts of Europe, and in many other places around the world.
So rather, I would argue that we need to make climate-aligned urbanism work— completely based on other values.
Places where you can move about safely regardless of age or gender. Places with a safe and close connection between buildings, building frontages, streets, and sidewalks—what I call human-scale streets—where different modes of transportation are efficiently combined.
This image is from Copenhagen—what I call third places, the in-between spaces where we can invite friends, gather, and share our city. And, as we also heard earlier from our young colleague on stage, it’s about designing neighborhoods that are shaped by residents themselves. These principles call for a new type of policy and a new type of design. And at Gehl, we believe that by avoiding the worst of climate change, we can actually bring out the best in cities—if we keep our focus on these principles.
Climate-Aligned Urbanism
So, what is different about climate-aligned urbanism?
Well, it changes the way residents move, the way we consume, and the way we live in cities. And all of these are major drivers of emissions. We don’t focus only on the emissions embedded within architecture and the built form itself, or the emissions produced from managing the city.
Instead, we focus on these three areas—what we call enabled emissions—because the built environment enables us to live in a certain way.
As human beings, we make sustainable or unsustainable choices every day, depending on our surroundings and what we feel encouraged or compelled to do. So, as designers, this gives us great influence—we can change behaviors and even cultures through design. And that’s the opportunity landscape for us.
So first, when we look at movement — and this is something you're already doing really well here in Seoul — we need to spend less time alone behind the wheel and more time engaging in active mobility, together. This can take many different forms, but most importantly, when everyday amenities and services are located more compactly and integrated with transport, people can move around in more social, connected, and active ways. This is actually how we stay healthy—both mentally and physically. And as we’ll see next, the same principle applies when we talk about how we consume in cities.
At the same time, we need to consume differently in our cities—with less duplicative ownership, and more shared tools, shared resources, and shared projects—perhaps even parts of our homes. I’m hearing that Seoul has an affordability issue when it comes to housing. So, exploring how we can live differently, and what aspects of our homes we might be able to share with others, could be an important step.
And again, looking at different ways of doing this, compact cities bring us closer together—allowing us to share resources and build stronger communities more efficiently, through markets and through everyday opportunities to connect across age and gender.
To give an example, in the public library in Berkeley, you can actually borrow tools— you don’t have to own everything yourself. It’s like going to the library not just for books, but to borrow the everyday tools you need. And lastly, as I mentioned, we need fewer single, inflexible buildings and many more flexible, repurposable spaces that can be shared among users.
And this also points to the fact that our dwellings are getting smaller and smaller, which, in a sense, is good from an environmental perspective. But for quality of life, we need more space—we need access to the outside. And by sharing more of these spaces, we can actually gain a higher quality of life and a richer experience of access to space.
And again, these are just some examples of how architecture can enable us to live in neighborhoods and interact with each other in new ways—making the most out of the buildings we already have.
The first example, on the top left, is from Copenhagen, where you see an old building from the 1970s transformed into a new space where people can sit out front, creating a shared living room experience through enclosed balconies. Another example is from Barrio 31, a favela—a self-built district in the center of Buenos Aires—where we have developed many public spaces within this low- income community.
Even though many residents have very little indoor space, they now have access to playgrounds, sports areas, streets, and plazas outside.
And the last example, on the far right, is a communal collegium for students in Copenhagen—a dormitory designed for shared living inside, and featuring a circular outdoor courtyard for shared public life.
We also need to retrofit the infrastructure that we already have. And again, I’m happy to see that Seoul has already begun this journey.
This is a project from Shanghai that we started working on in 2017. Today, more than 4.8 million people have access to this area, which now includes over 42 kilometers of pedestrianized riverfront space—where people can walk, cycle, and run. It has completely transformed the quality of life for residents in this neighborhood. Another example is from George Street in Sydney, where we converted a car- dominated corridor with very little pedestrian space into a light rail route, connecting people from the harbor front up to the main train station.
When we work on these projects, we often also help design national, citywide, or regional design guidelines. We did that for Shanghai, and those guidelines have now been adopted across the entire Shanghai region. We also just finalized national guidelines for Saudi Arabia—a country with very harsh conditions and, honestly, very difficult streets. So, focusing on how you can change your policies and guidelines to reflect these new demands also leads to climate adaptation.
This is a plan we’ve been working on for the city of Bologna, a very historic district with a strong cultural heritage that we need to protect—while at the same time gradually introducing more greenery into the urban fabric, much like what I’ve seen already happening here in some of Seoul’s streets.
And this is our latest project from Copenhagen, where we’re transforming one of the main thoroughfares right in front of our Town Hall Square and Tivoli into a new green garden. Again, repurposing infrastructure shouldn’t be limited to the city center—you need to bring it to all parts of the city, to poorer neighborhoods as well as more affluent ones. Because the idea is that public space, as I see it, is a human right. And we need to make sure that the entire city is connected through a network of spaces that create opportunities for everyone—and that also support economic development.
Building Social Infrastructure
During COVID, about four or five years ago, we carried out many small street- opening projects to support local businesses—helping them stay open and thrive despite restrictions on opening hours and the number of people allowed indoors.
And finally, we’ve recently conducted studies showing a clear link between how public spaces are designed and programmed, and the social connections people build within them. Public spaces need to offer both what we call explicit and implicit invitations—signals that tell people they matter as human beings, and that encourage social interaction.
And sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference. For example, in Copenhagen, when you cycle and stop at an intersection, there’s a small handrail you can hold onto—so you don’t have to get off your bike before continuing your ride. Little touches like that make people feel more at home in their city.
Furthermore, participatory programming is a powerful tool for fostering social connection in public spaces. This includes not only intentional programming, but also active stewardship and volunteering—people taking care of and managing spaces over time.
There are also certain physical interventions that I would be curious to learn how you approach here in Seoul. For instance, we’ve seen that public art installations can increase activity levels by around 20 percent. That’s crucial for what we call living heritage—not just the built heritage, but the living culture of a place.
We also observe that adding public seating can increase socializing and time spent in an area by more than 70 percent. Landscaping, which you’ve already been doing here in Seoul, plays a key role as well. And finally, lighting—something that makes us feel safe at any time of day, week, or season—is incredibly important.
All of these elements together form what I call social infrastructure:
not just the physical infrastructure, but the social systems of the city—how people connect, interact, and build community. This is something we can study, map, and evaluate—understanding how social infrastructure is connected, planning and designing for it, and monitoring how it evolves alongside the city’s culture over time.
This supports what we call hubs, havens, and hangouts — a system that includes all three types of spaces.
We’ve been working with social infrastructure in several cities. For example, in Abu Dhabi we focused particularly on caregivers and children—how to make the city more welcoming for families and kids. And if Seoul wants to see more children and more families choosing to stay, if you want young people to start having more children, then a good starting point is to make sure that the spaces themselves are inviting for that.
In Copenhagen, we now have numerous playgrounds—something we didn’t used to have. Some of them are even staffed, with people from the city working there to ensure that children are engaged and active. When we design intentionally for specific age groups, we can clearly see an increase in activity—particularly among children in this case.
Recommendations for Seoul
So, I’m getting close to my recommendations for Seoul.
Of course, it’s difficult, because I don’t know the city deeply. But I did study it quite a bit—about twelve years ago, I conducted a master class at the World Transport Forum together with Seoul’s transport director at that time. Since then, I’ve tried to follow from afar what Seoul has been doing.
So, please take my words as humble recommendations—perhaps just an outsider’s perspective.
But I do believe that the key is to make the future irresistible—to make Seoul irresistible—through public life and public spaces. You’re already doing so many things right. But perhaps there’s still room to further enhance the human scale, and to design your social infrastructure with even greater purpose and intent. That, I believe, could make Seoul one of the most inspiring and livable cities in the world.
This pathway could potentially include four steps.
First, I think it’s important that you find your own model.
I don’t recommend Copenhagenizing the world. We work in many different places, and what truly matters is that you gather data, engage people locally, and map what your public life looks like today. Who is actively using the city right now? What kinds of activities are happening across the year and throughout the week? Are there certain groups who are missing out? And what can we do to help people feel more at home and develop a stronger sense of belonging? Through this true mapping of your diverse population and activities, you can develop your own model for growth.
Next, I would recommend reviewing your policy framework—what policies and guidelines you already have in place to guide public space development, housing, and architecture.
I know you already have design guidelines and even some for integrating art, but looking more specifically at urban design guidelines that connect everything toward societal impact could be the next step.
And again, engage communities, gather data, and summarize all of this in a comprehensive plan for public space and public life—something that helps prioritize investments in the years ahead.
We need longer-term plans for infrastructure investment.
Too often, cities are limited by annual budgets without secured funding for the future.
But public infrastructure is not just a nice-to-have; it’s essential.
It’s the foundation for living a healthy, high-quality life in an urban environment.
And the last example I want to share is a new national architecture policy that I’ve been part of — an expert group that worked on it for two years. It was initiated by the Ministry of Culture in Denmark, and I was the spokesperson for the group. You can download the document from the Ministry’s website, and hopefully, you’ll find some inspiration there.
And this links urban planning, landscape, and also building architecture into one new policy. It’s divided into three different chapters. One where we talk about the fact that you need to expand something, you need to make more room for nature. And I think you are already doing a lot of work in that area. I think you should not just drive this policy from aesthetics and from design but make sure that the nature that you provide is usable, that you can use it for play, that it fosters connection, that people can use it to rest. But that’s definitely what we need more of.
We need to also minimize resources, use less resources, optimize the material use, reduce the energy, and all of these things that you are also working on, I know. And then the last thing, make sure that everything you do gets quality for all people, not just for select groups, but work for all citizens because that is the obligation of any city.
So below this, you’ll find a number of-you could say-guidelines.
Prioritize care and beauty. Make sure that every architecture you build is actually beautiful, because if it is, it will stay for the future. Make sure that you maintain, renovate, but also transform what you already have. There are too many old buildings that are being torn down.
And then make sure that you build circular, make room for nature as I was talking about, and strengthen a holistic approach to planning in the built environment. I showed examples of that as well, and then build local values and cultural heritage, not just as physical but as the living heritage. Create inclusive forms of building and then prioritize new and mandatory coordination.
And this is back to where I started. We need to collaborate together and put these cross-departmental working groups together for every project.
I urge you to embrace the moment that we are in right now, embrace the urgency of the moment. It is so important that we start with life first—people and planet—and from that, protect and transform what you already have.
Don’t just focus on what’s new. Take time to appreciate the value of what we already have. From there, strengthen programming and engagement — and over time, work toward a greener and more just future.
So, I would say, skip the old planning models. Don’t reproduce the failures of the past that I showed you images of in the beginning. Think circularity—think circularity into infrastructure, into urban spaces, and into buildings. And then, collaborate.
We need so many new forms of partnerships going forward, because we don’t have time to make mistakes. And the more we can work together, the faster we become as a planning and design community.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and speak to you all today.
