Copenhagen reveals secrets of building a happiest city
THE DANISH CAPITAL RANKS HIGH ON THE LIST OF THE WORLD’S HEALTHIEST AND HAPPIEST CITIES. WITH OBESITY AND DEPRESSION ON THE RISE WORLDWIDE, HERE ARE ITS LESSONS FOR HOW TO COMBAT THEM CULTURALLY
Maybe it’s the Viking heritage. There is an icy open-air pool in the waters of Copenhagen’s harbour, and although it is midwinter Danes still jump in every day. On the front cover of the city’s health plan, a lean older man is pictured climbing out, dripping, his mouth open in a shout that could be horror or pleasure. ‘Enjoy life, Copenhageners,’ urges the caption.
It’s not every Copenhagener who wants to take strenuous exercise in cold water either for fun or to get fit. But the packed bike lanes of the Danish capital, even at this sometimes sub-zero time of year, are testimony to the success of a city that is aspiring to be one of the healthiest in the world. Copenhagen consistently sits at the very top of the UN’s happiness index and is one of the star performers in the Healthy Cities initiative of the World Health Organisation, which, almost unknown and unsung, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
The initiative was the idea of a group of individuals inspired by the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978, which was about elevating the status of primary care and public health in a world where everybody equated health care with hospital treatment after you got ill.
Copenhagen is a model for how healthy cities might be created across the world. It joined the WHO Healthy Cities initiative in 1987, a year after the original 11 cities — Barcelona, Bloomsbury/Camden, Bremen, Dusseldorf, Horsens, Liverpool, Pecs, Rennes, Sofia, Stockholm and Turku. There are 1,400 cities in the scheme now.
Copenhagen has “a very, very good health policy” to last 10 years, sidestepping the vicissitudes of political life, says Katrine Schjonning, the city’s head of public health. “We said it’s for 10 years because to make changes in public health you need a long perspective.” And they made it simple, with just six initiatives.
Promoting health in everyday life is the first, says the city’s plan, “by making it attractive to cycle, by serving nutritious lunches in our institutions or by enabling educational institutions to offer quit-smoking programmes. Healthy thriving people are ... more likely to complete an education and find employment. In other words, health enables us to live the life we want.”
All on bikes
On the wintry Copenhagen streets, children, young adults and older people are all on bikes, with parents and their children on cargo bikes (a quarter of families in Copenhagen own one).
“We bike all the time. We bike to the moon several times a year in Copenhagen,” says Schjonning. An extraordinary 62 per cent of people living in the city cycle to work every day and the vast majority keep it up through cold and wet weather. “It’s not because it’s the healthy choice. It’s because it’s the easiest choice,” says Schjonning. “The city is designed for bikes and not cars.”
Copenhagen has hit on a truth. We don’t do what we ought to do for our health — we do what we enjoy or what makes our lives easiest. The dropout rate after the New Year surge in gym memberships is surely clear evidence of that.
Danes, as it happens, do not seem to like being told what to do. Schjonning pulls a face when I ask about laws banning smoking in public places. Copenhagen offers smoking cessation courses to anyone who comes to a health clinic, but the health authority can’t take a hard line on those who smoke in a children’s playground. There are notices that politely ask you not to smoke, but no penalty.
“Across the political spectrum in Denmark, banning smoking is very politicised. It has become almost a human right to smoke,” says Schjonning. “It is very black and white that the state should not tell you whether or not to smoke. The same goes for alcohol, which is really entrenched in the culture in Denmark. Young people in Denmark hold the European record for drinking. It is very difficult to limit it [smoking] because it is your personal freedom,” she says, with mock emphasis, “no matter how much the public health academics and professionals can demonstrate that smoking is the biggest killer known.”
So Copenhagen shrugs its shoulders and doesn’t do prohibitions or tax or hector its citizens. As part of its determination to become carbon-neutral by 2025, Copenhagen requires all new flat roofs to be planted with vegetation.
Other initiatives include equal attention to mental and physical health and partnering with day-care facilities, schools, workplaces and others to embed healthy lifestyles. But the hardest is tackling the inequalities that exist in Copenhagen, as in any city. Crossing Queen Louisa’s Bridge across the lakes, from the city centre to the multicultural, hip but poorer district of Norrebro, the average man’s life expectancy drops by seven years.
With a 37-hour working week, Denmark is more enlightened than most countries. Childcare is free for all, so almost all mothers of younger children work. “I think it is better than in other countries, but everybody is in the workforce in Denmark,” says Welling.
Society and stress
“Most of the stress is that you are never off work. Your employer is paying for your mobile phone and can call you at night. And then we have higher ambitions. We want to be the best parents, the best people in our own lives and we have higher expectations. Society makes us impose the stress on ourselves,” she says.
Surveys throw up contradictory findings all the time. Although nearly a quarter of Copenhageners say they are stressed, the city still sits at the top of that UN happiness index. So the question being used is: imagine the best possible life you could lead and the worst possible life you could lead on a scale from 10 to zero. Where do you stand on that?”
That may come. Copenhageners used to move out of the city when they retired. Now they are increasingly choosing to stay with their families and enjoy the city.
Property prices are rising as a result and the economic, social and health gap between the better and worse off is widening, as in so many countries. Somehow, though, you can’t help thinking Copenhagen will manage it much better than most.
We bike all the time. We bike to the moon several times a year in Copenhagen. It’s not because it’s the healthy choice. It’s because it’s the easiest choice. The city is designed for bikes and not cars.” Katrine Schjonning | Copenhagen’s head of public health