Mikael Colville-Andersen
Danish-Canadian urban designer, author of Copenhagenize and host of The Life-Sized City; has run urbanism and recovery projects in Ukraine from 2022.
Mikael Colville-Andersen did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsDanish society is built on a remarkable degree of collective identity, social cohesion and mutual trust. And I think our humour is one of the ways we maintain that cohesion.
↗Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend Youcolvilleandersen.medium.com 1st of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsI have no problem with people who live in Copenhagen for years and don’t master Danish. English is a great lingua franca in a modern European city.
↗Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend Youcolvilleandersen.medium.com 2nd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsHumour is often precisely how we deal with uncomfortable things. Death, fear, uncertainty, stupidity, tragedy. Making a joke about something doesn’t automatically mean we’re trivialising it. Sometimes it’s how we process it.
↗Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend Youcolvilleandersen.medium.com 3rd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsIf you’ve chosen to live in another culture, surely part of the experience is making an effort to understand how that culture works? Not necessarily agreeing with everything, but at least recognising that your own cultural expectations aren’t universal.
↗Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend Youcolvilleandersen.medium.com 4th of 5 in this piece
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Our reading
The most easily offended person in the room should not decide what everyone else may laugh at.
Their wordsI certainly don’t want to live in a society where the most easily offended person in the room gets to decide what everybody else can laugh at.
↗Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend Youcolvilleandersen.medium.com 5th of 5 in this piece
- 12 months earlier
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Their wordsIt’s heroic, yes. But heroism has a half-life. For three years, the country has run on unpaid labour and unmeasured compassion. The longer the war drags on, the more that volunteer energy begins to look less like virtue and more like a system failure that people are too decent to abandon.
↗The Anatomy of a Post-Bravery Society — The Cost of Kindnesscolvilleandersen.medium.com