“Look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.”
— Hazy Shade of Winter, Simon & Garfunkel
Admit it: most of us prefer the 1987 version by The Bangles.
Urban Patterns | Nuuk, Greenland
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A
NOTE: Urban Patterns is focusing on more obscure and/or extreme locations in a number of posts over the next few weeks.
Nuuk, Greenland is the capital city of Greenland. It is located at the end of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord on the eastern shore of the Labrador Sea. The area around Nuuk has a long history of habitation dating as far back to 2,200 BC including the ancient pre-Inuit, Vikings/Norse, Norwegian, and Danish people. The colony founded in 1728 by the Dano-Norwegian Crown consisted of mutinous soldiers, convicts, and prostitutes; most of whom died within the first year of scurvy and other ailments. Today, it has a population of approximately 16,500 people and over a third of Greenland’s total population lives in the Nuuk Greater Metropolitan area. The town has steadily grown over the last two decades with the population increasing by over a third relative to the 1990 levels, and by over 22% relative to the 2000 levels. Nuuk has developed trade, business, shipping, and other industries. It began as a small fishing settlement with a harbor but, as the economy developed rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, the fishing industry declined. However, seafood including fish, seal, and so forth is still sold in abundance in Nuuk and the capital contains a number of fish markets. Minerals such as zinc, gold, and so forth have significantly contributed to the development of Nuuk’s economy. The city, like much of Greenland, is heavily dependent upon Danish funding and investment (Source: Wikipedia).
The urban grid of Nuuk is somewhat unexpected. Given the extreme polar climate, one might expect a more compact layout to promote energy and heat efficiency in the settlement. However, the town has more of a dispersed deformed grid layout, perhaps somewhat more characteristic of Inuit settlements in the horizontal dimension whilst much of the architecture reflects a Danish/European influence in the vertical dimension (see the header image). The dispersed nature of the urban grid might also be reflective of the rapid growth occurring in the town over the previous three decades. Some areas of the urban grid are laid out in a manner consistent with American suburban sprawl patterns, especially to the east and north of the town. The somewhat hilly terrain of the town probably plays a role in this settlement form as well. Given its location in Greenland, several things about Nuuk might, at first glance, strike some people as odd: for example, Nuuk has its own golf club and course, which is adjacent to the University of Greenland campus (yes, there is a university but only 150 students); there is the Greenland National Museum, a National Library, and a Greenland National Bank; and, even two stadia located in the town, a futbol stadium with a seating capacity of 2,000 people and a handball stadium that can hold 1,000 people. Nuuk, Greenland is so unexpected in many ways, which it is utterly fascinating.
(Updated: July 4, 2017)
Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.
The ancient concept of a city is remarkably different to our modern one due to radical differences in population. World population is generally estimated at between 15-60 million people before the 4th century AD height of the Roman Empire. World population today is more than 7 billion people or approximately 100-500 times greater, depending upon scholarly estimates for ancient populations. The modern megalopolis would have been unimaginable to our ancient ancestors. We also have to accept the limits of translation. Biblical texts have been translated time and time again over the ages. What we might find in researching the Holy Bible will be heavily dependent upon how these ancient texts were translated in the past, hereby affecting our interpretation of the material today. This article initially relies upon the King James (KJB) version of the Holy Bible but also uses the Catholic New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) (translated “directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic” according to the Roman Catholic Church) as a double-check for translation issues. It is likely this is insufficient. However, it is a good place to start if we actually hope to say anything on the subject during a single lifetime.
The first city mentioned in the Holy Bible is Enoch, built by Cain and named after his son (NJB Genesis 4:17. “Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became the founder of a city and gave the city the name of his son Enoch”). Some argue Cain’s Enoch is the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk, which was famous as the capital city of Gilgamesh, hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, it is more generally accepted that Uruk is the biblical Erech, said to be founded by Nimrod, who was the great-grandson of Noah. In any case, considering he famously murdered his brother Abel (KJB Genesis 4:9 “Am I my brother’s keeper?”), Cain represents a rather inauspicious father figure for city builders and planners. One could argue (tongue-firmly-in-cheek), this represents the original sin of the planning profession for which they still seek amends to this day as modern planners explicitly desire to be their “brother’s keeper”.
Major’s Twitter postings generated such a positive response that he collected together the first 366 proverbs in Poor Richard, An Almanac for Architects and Planners, first published in Spring 2013 but now available in digital format in 
We cannot skate our way to spatial freedom but only walk the path of its responsibilities.