When I arrived to Denmark one thing surprised me, the lack of elevators. In most buildings I have been in, there is simply no elevators. Ok, truth be told most of the buildings in Copenhagen have up to 5 levels and you would think that in buildings this high elevatores are not needed. But what if most of the city has buildings of this size? Do you still don't need elevatores?
One day I took this up with my girlfriend. Her first reaction was: "But who needs elevators? And why would you waste money on elevators?"
And at first it made sense, buildings aren't that high and most people can walk, so no issues there. But when I started thinking about it a bit more, the correct answer is the other way around. There is only one category of people who don't need elevators and that is healthy adults without children. Everybody else needs elevatores: elderly people, small children, parents with small children, adults with some illness or injury, pregnant women and especially people with disabilities.
One thing, in relation to the elevators that I find a bit at odds with each other is the fact that the streets of Copenhagen are very accessible to people with disabilities and Danish healthcare system is giving out moving aids to people with disabilities. But I just can't shake the feeling that when you combine this with the lack of elevatores in the whole city you get a funny contradiction. People with some movement imparing disability will have no problems going around the city but when they reach the building where they live, unless they are blessed with an elevator, they can't reach their apartments. Maybe I am exagurating, but that contrast really seems a bit off to me. What is the point of all the mobility aids for people with disabilities when they can't reach their homes? Are there neighbourhoods for people with disabilities? If there are how is that different from ghetto areas? And what about adults that suffer some injury? Are they forced to move out of their apartments because suddenly they can't reach them or leave them?
And there is actually one thing that I see as a cruel joke, that was, I guess ment as an aid. I saw it in a couple of buildings. In one particular building there are a couple of old ladies that have a very hard time walking. When they are walking on the flat surface they need to stop and catch some breath every 15 to 20m. You know what the building administration did to help them? They installed a small foldable metal chairs on levels between the floors so they can sit down. While I understand that is supposed to help them but to me it looks like a cruel joke.
Instead of elevatores most buildings in Copenhagen have frontstairs and backstairs. Frontstairs don't need explaining, it's just normal staircases that people use to get to their apartments. Backstairs, now that is something that needs explaining. Back stairs usualy connect the apartments to their backyards, if the building has one. But the main reason for them is second escape option in case a fire starts.
Copanhagen had a number of nasty fires through out it's history and back stairs were implemented as a second fire escape option. You need to understand how does the average backstairs look like. They are very narrow, steep with very sharp turns and they are not uniform. When I say not uniform what I mean is that the number and form of steps can vary between different floors. So there can be lets say 10 steps of a certain height between 1st and 2nd floor and then 12 steps between 2nd and 3rd floor. Out of those 12 steps two of them have bigger surface area and are lower then the other steps and so it varies between the floors. Trust me, back stairs ain't a thing where you wanna run in the case of a fire. The chances are you will trip, fall and kill yourself if you need to run from a fire on the backstairs. I would rather chance it with a blanket on the mainstairs then on the backstairs.
I must say that for me, in the modern day backstairs seem just obsolete and useles. I don't see a good reason why shouldn't backstairs be replaced with an elevator so that even non adult healthy people can reach their apartments without problems. Just tear down the back stairs. Some people told me that building an elevator would be too expensive. How come that building balconies on buildings without them isn't too expensive?
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