From Le Corbusier to today, architects of the automobile era designed buildings that look good from an automobile vantage point: serene and beautiful at high distance or while passing at high speed, but become imposing and dehumanizingly out-of-scale at human distance. Large windswept grassy areas or concrete plazas provide pleasing visual separation at car scale but turn into desolate voids at scale.

These “towers in the park” designs are seductive in a concept sketch; it’s only when people start interacting with them in real life that they fail to create working public spaces and a feeling of community. So seductive, in fact, that advocates of livable cities and smart growth can disagree on whether a design solves sprawl or creates even greater isolation.

In this post at Streetsblog, contributor Alec Appelbaum praises a design for a development in the outskirts of Copenhagen as “an inspiring blend of striking architecture and compact planning” which could “deliver a sense of exploration without sprawl.” However, commenters immediately questioned whether this plan truly avoided the failures of towers in the park. “It looks pretty sterile and dead. Where do people shop? Where do they get a coffee and a bagel, er, a danish, and meet with friends?” wrote one commenter.

“This unusable ‘open space’ is really more about celebrating the architecture than anything that is urban or human,” wrote another, adding, “The focus has evolved [from Transit-Oriented Development] to be more about People-Oriented Development. The above is not ‘People-Oriented.’” and comparing it to Barcelona’s “upscale ghetto” Diagonal Mar. “If all the commercial and civic activity is in the buildings, if the open space is not useable, if the distances between the buildings is too vast for social interaction to occur, then I still don’t see how this isn’t just towers-in-the-park with nicer architecture,” said a third. “The existing renderings just don’t do a good job of showing this detail and the social aspects you’re speaking of, Alec.”

Alec defends his praise, arguing, “Seems like the project deserves a chance to operate before we dismiss it. All I’m insisting on is that there are many ways to achieve communal space - on an abandoned railroad trestle, in a planned setting, even (consider the celebration after the NJ Devils won the Stanley Cup) in a parking lot.” With just a few sketches, it’s hard to know. Is this just a case of Alec being fooled by a pretty drawing, or a real innovation? Either way, we clearly still don’t have all the answers about what makes a good space.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.