Why Denmark Is Insanely Well Designed 

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My parents (English father, Danish mother) both worked on the Storebælt bridge, which is how they first met in 1990. It's cute that a bridge-building project designed to connect people is what literally brought them together, and is the reason I exist.

As someone living in the Netherlands I can see so many similarities, its almost like the two countries are distanced brothers.

It just seems to be that small places with a population of between 5 & 10 million people tend to be very functional, small enough that the government can focus on more or less everything that needs to be done without being overwhelmed by the scale or lack of geographic proximity to the problems that need solving.

Germany should learn a thing or two from Denmark about digitization and bureaucracy. Almost every government process in German is steeped in contrived bureaucratic processes and the state of digitation there is abysmal.

I've been staying in Copenhagen for a few weeks, and it lives up to everything you said. Very purposeful, very efficient, very well run. Great place to be. There is a focus on other important things in life - raising families, enjoying the outdoors, being active, socialising. The city eally seems like it was designed for humans, rather than just an economy.

I would like to say, I have been to Denmark and it is an amazing country. Would I say it's worth the higher taxes I would say yes from an out sider to the country it is very expensive but it is an amazing place, everything works great and affectively. Highly recommended

Great video! As an American it's painful to see how far behind we are with public transit infrastructure compared to other developed countries. I admire the Scandinavian people for being so practical, rational, and forward thinking. Our car dependent culture over here needs to change. Stay awesome Denmark! ✌️

As a Dane it stings a bit to say it but the Swedes deserve a lot of credit for getting Femern going, it wasn't really our idea nor ze Germans (doesn't bother me at all that many are using the German spelling for a Scandinavian financed and conceived project that Germany is merely upgrading their own network to accommodate/connect to). Gonna be handy now they found Rare Earths in Sweden too.

As someone who lives in Norway and has a similar tax as Danmark, I believe it's worth the higher tax when it comes with more benefits than negatives. Free detal care until 18, and for me, who was born with certain dental challenges, this alone saved my parents thousand of kronors. General free health care in case of emergency unless it's cosmetic surgery for beauty purposes, then its from your own pocket.I had a complex wrist fracture couple of years ago and it hasn't costs me much other than a small fee of a couple of hundred kronors but it would have costs me a house and my pride in country like America. To sum it up, the benefits outweigh the negatives by far, and if offering 30-35% of my monthly salary for it to keep it like that, then it's worth it.

There are a few mistakes in the video. * You say that the Fehmarn Belt bridge will reduce congestion in Copenhagen. But nobody going to Germany is going through Copenhagen anyway, unless they start at that spot. And the through traffic from Sweden will still have to use the same motorway from the bridge and as far as to Køge, so it doesn't divert any traffic at all until *after* Køge. * The comparison of stations/inhabitant with London is also incorrect. If you count the entire S-Train network, then you should use the population of the entire region that is served by S-trains, which is about a million. The 600k figure is for Copenhagen Municipality alone, but the S-trains extend far beyond that area. * ERTMS does not allow for driverless trains, and there are no plans for driverless trains on the mainlines. However, the CBTC system (which is only for the S-trains) does allow for future driverless trains. * The UK has most of the national railway network as a state-owned railway, owned by Network Rail. However, it is operated by private companies on concession agreements. * Also, you say that developers don't need to ask Parliament for permission for big projects in Denmark. That's just blatantly false. All infrastructure projects require an "Anlægslov" in order to be built. Just in general, there is a huge problem with Danish railways: there is no coherent long-term plan. Instead, projects are considered on an ad-hoc basis, which means that sometimes, projects that would really work much better if done together, end up being split up... and at other times, projects that are individually good but would conflict with each other, can end up being approved at the same time. This is why there is no proper flyover on the railways east of Ringsted - the politicians wanted to save a bit of money in the short term, so they cut out the flyover, making it much more expensive to retrofit a flyover in the near future. The current system of switches also causes frequent delays.

I visited Copenhagen from the US back in October. I really enjoyed just how easy it was to get around the city. It was a great trip!

Secret to success: educate your population, unionize your workers, vote for non-corrupt politicians and take care of the weakest and poorest of your people. What not to do: Concentrate wealth at the top, educate only the inbred rich kids, ignore workers’ rights and wage war on the poorest and weakest in your society. We’ve tried both in Denmark… so glad I’m here now and not 150years ago.

The transitions at 10:30 were insane - good job there in the animation process. I love watching videos where I can see that a lot of effort went into them ❤️

An incredible video as always, and I'm glad to hear you do a video on your home country and city! I'm deeply jealous of the simplicity and digitization of your government and wish the same could be done here in America. Again, no place is perfect - but I feel Denmark is one of the best role models around.

I didn't realize you were Danish before you started naming the islands. Good to meet another Dane doing English speaking videos here :)

Du laver seriøst god reklame for Danmark, Thumbs up!😊 Du skal nok ikke beskrive hvor ekstremt dårlige vi er til at rydde sne på vejene, tænk hvis Sverige, Norge og Tyskland blev klar over hvordan vi taklede lidt sne, sååååå pinligt😂 Tak for gode videoer😊

Technically ''Storebælt'' have already been paid off, but the Danish state have been using the income from the bridge to finance other infrastructure projects..

i live in a city in southern italy that has been moving towards public transport and bike infrastructure(we got 2 new metro lines, 4 tram lines, and various km of bike lanes) im really hoping we dont stop whit this expansion. it may look like nothing but my city has always been poor and neglected by the government so even those small steps mean alot to us and have improved our everyday life

Hi great video Just watch it with my boyfriend. As a Dane I enjoyed it a lot and actually learned a lot. But I come from Lemvig in the West Coast. And I would like to see a similar video talking about the infrastructure in the rest of Denmark. This video is very focused on CPH. And the West Coast of Denmark is very different. Also would be great if you include what the impacts of the new tunnel would be on Jylland. As a Jyde I felt left out 😂😂 Again great video! Keep up the good work!

As a Danish person, I'm quite happy with the higher taxes. I get health care and such for far, far less than I could ever get in another country. Plus public transit here in Aarhus is pretty great too, so I have nothing to complain about.

Skide god video. Er selv under uddannelse som grafisk video-klipper, og dine videoer har virkelig inspireret.

Ahh... "Vognmandsruten". The ferry us "poor" people would travel on back in the day, before the Great Belt was bridged. That was also when the motorway from Copenhagen terminated in Ringsted and you would travel the main country road to Korsør. Visiting the family in Jutland just just took way longer back then. Everything is getting bridged these days. Femern next. Maybe we will get another bridge between "Sjællands Odde" on the island of Zealand and "Ebeltoft" on the "nose tip" of Jutland? Someone has also come up with the crazy idea of connecting "Grenen" the northern tip of northern Jutland with Sweden.

A little correction, the bridge "Store Bælt" has already been paid off, but you still has to pay to traverse, to insure maintenance and bring a lot of money to "statskassen" which partly goes to healthcare and such

Dette var et meget interessant videoer! Som et Kanadiensk at vil gerne flytte til Danmark efter jeg blev forelsket med den lande på et ferie i Oktober af 2022, det var dejlig til at høre et dansker mening om infrastructuret jeg var så imponderet over. Til at høre planerne til fremtid for lande bare laver mig flytte hurtigere.

Such a great channel.....unique!!! Love from the Netherlands....also insanely well designed😀!!

The great bridge was a lot more expensive than 950 million dollars. It was 3 billion USD back in 1988. Also, while it is technically still being paid off, the reason is that the government still collects money from it to use on different projects (1.3 billion USD have been used on other projects).

Your danish is very good, it's so refreshing to hear good danish in a video about Denmark.

I am from Denmark and I love the country. Sometimes I wish my mother had brought me to the US, buy that was 65 years ago when US was magical…..now, not so much. I miss Denmark

i like rejsekort in the physical form. just so i dont have to warry about my phone running out of juice tho i cant wait for DSB and Rejsekort to come out digitaly this year

s-busses usually isnt from the cityceter to the suburbs, most of them dont go to the center, they go perpendicular around it in rings connecting the 5 finger of the finger plan

You mentioned taxes at the end, I think it is important to note that no matter how much tax revenue the US government collects or how much money it spends that it will be wasted and be a net negative to society, mostly used for corruption and enriching the rich further and / or the military industrial complex. This isn't solely military spending, though, it's anything they do. It's incredibly rare for a government to actually reinvest any of the money it collects in a way that benefits 90% of society instead of the elite.

Yay a video about my favorite country atm

It's really nice to see a person who actually comprehends how good his country is, usually you see people always complaining. Denmark is the absolute TOP TIER country on a world scale, and this is a very very exclusive club, I am specifically referring to living standards of ordinary people, NOT GDP, military or some high tech (supposedly rich) dystopian country like South Korea for example.

There's a lot the UK could learn & apply from other countries, like Denmark (I'm half-Danish, btw) but you can't really compare the task faced by London Transport (LT, or TFL), for instance, with that of København's local transport operators. It's just on a different scale, upgrading/revamping existing infrastructure poses huge cost & organisational problems.

Perfekt video. Tak ❤

A few mistakes in this video. - Storebæltsbroen is 16.7 km not 6.7 km - Storebæltsbroen technically has earned back the construction cost - however maintenance is a thing, it is a good business, and people haven't rioted yet, so the cost is still high to cross. - The femern belt connection is a tunnel, not a bridge - Denmark doesn't have a shortage of farmland. 59% of the country is arable land, next-highest in the world, second only to Bangladesh

Why is Portugal on the Spain's map? i demand an explanation, Caralho

The way you pronounced Fyn and Sjælland was flawless. Had to pause and tell you that. Waow.

Great video

Interesting take. On the other hand, if one looks just at Sjælland, the network is very "Purchasing Harbour"-centric. Kalundborg (for example) where the evil empire produce all that insulin, has to depend on its port, as the commune still hasn't built the motorway to Holbæk despite Novo Nordisk shelling out billions in tax. The single rail track still isn't electrified, the road to Slagelse (and onwards to Falster) is extremely slow (even when you get past the multitude of pensioners driving at 60 km/h) and most of the country roads are appalling (flooded, pot-holed, too narrow for the traffic). So yeah, there is some fantastic infrastructure in DK, and it maybe it's individual communes that are responsible for their network, but there's still plenty to improve on. ;)

lovely video Copenhagen is my favourite big city that I have visited. Large amounts of people always annoy the shit out of me and Copenhagen is the on that stresses me the least. Less crowding than any big city that I have been to and its also stunning. It don't give me the cement jungle feels. Winters not to rough either (live in Uppsala slightly north of Stockholm). Denmark also has great food culture, better than Sweden I would say. Was born in Denmark and have some family there so I visit often.

Just a little note 😊 S busses are “station busses” and have there routes along the train routes we also have E busses and those are local busses (most for older people) that go past swim halls city offices libraries and other local centres ❤

Virkelig velproduceret video - meget informativ, selv for en dansker :-)

Comparing London tube stations with Copenhagen metro+S-train stations is misleading. Mainly because London also has the Overground, DLR and the south-of-the-Thames network of rail stations that act as de facto S-trains. Also, the stations you listed for Copenhagen seem to be network totals, and much of the network is outside the city proper, particularly for the S-trains.

Did you mean to show your address @ 15:14? 🤫

As a Dane... The bridge is already paid off, but the government doesn't want to lower prices cause who will pay their fat salary if it doesn't get funded by the people, so the prices are just insane and doesn't match maintenance reasons

love the video and great pronunciation (im from denmark)

In Serbia we unfortunately do not have any high speed railways and tunnels, nor do we have a large scale metro system in the capital. I think that this immensely hinders the country from prospering. We are very comparable to Denmark in area, population and size of the capital city. Conclusion. When you dont put your priorities straight, you end up with lagging behind other countries for decades..

Definitely Netherlands and denmark looks similar in many aspects.

In regards to the your comment that the Fehmarn belt fixed link. You said at 3:54 and 4:08. Due to the location of the Fehmarn belt fixed link, the trains will use the existing railway infrastructure between Ringsted and Malmö in Denmark and Sweden and since Copenhagen (København) is along this part of the route, the connection will offer as much a bypass to Copenhagen as the existing railway via Fyn and Jutland (Jylland). The same can also be said about the road connection where it's the same between Køge and Sweden which include the Øresund bridge and the Helsingborg - Helsingør ferry. It's however a completely different question whether most of the passenger trains will stop in at least one station in Copenhagen or not. This decision that is made by the railway operators based on the commercial prospects of a stop in a case by case basis.

I think im going to keep my self in scandinavian related topic comment sections. This is the nicest and most polite comment section i have seen in a long time 🤣

Great video, as a Dane I must say that I agree, and yes the price tag is absolutely worth it💫

Even if Denmark isn’t perfect, I’d say it’s about as close as it gets. I’m a Brit living in the UK and things are pretty messed up here. I’d happily pay higher tax to get the quality of life Denmark has.

Life has changed. Back in the early 2000's I took a ferry from Malmö to Copenhagen when the bridge was not yet open. ( I was travelling by bicycle so I don't think that even today I could take the bridge sinne it's most likely for motor vehicles only. ) A few years after that, also by travelling by bicycle, I took the ferry from Rødbyhavn to Puttgarden. Soon it can be crossed by car, but Stiller you have to take a ferry if you travel by bike.

I only realized you were Danish when you said "fyn" and "Sjæland" at 2:18 (or at the very least have perfect pronunciation of those two words) From one Dane to another, great video

As a Dane i still love hearing random Danish words and names in our pronunciation in an otherwise English video, cause it always stands out as the total gibberish that Danish truly is compared to other languages xD Edit: since moving to the Netherlands, I really do like that we can use regular debit/credit cards just like we would the rejsekort, I usually just use the card I have connected to my phone's NFC

A very well-managed nation. Most of the Scandinavian countries are a role model of sustainable and equitable development with a first-rate record of ecological protection meeting SDG criteria.

I will say, that as a Dane, who's brother oftenly takes long train rides, the trains rarely are on time. We have experienced 2 times over the past year, that the train has been over 2 hours delayed. As a person who takes train and bus every day to get to and from school, i totally agree that the S-trains, the busses and the metro work together seamlessly tho.

The bridge over “store bælt” was payed back twice as fast as expected, and we still pay a large ammount to use it. Of cause it still cost to keep it in mint condition. But the initial cost was payed back several years ago.

It would’ve been cool if you showed where the bridges are or are being built. You said some danish names of where they are but me as a non-Dane have no clue where that is, a map picture would’ve been cool:)

This is why some Dutch people like me simply love Denmark.

Good to see more countries following in the footsteps of Singapore

Experience with Copenhagen metro is full pleasure, very intuitive, fast, there is no bad thing I can say about it.

I've only been to Denmark once in 2019 but my mum's side of the family is Danish. her father for many years managed a team of road builders (idk what exactly to call them). one road his team built is a major road in Denmark (I don't know the name sorry!) and this may not be true now but in 2019 it had never needed to be repaired once! He just turned 80 and hasn't been building roads for a long time so I find it incredibly impressive. when he last visited us in Australia in 2015 and every time before, he would always complain about the quality of the roads here 😂

I find the design and organization of small countries like Denmark to be interesting case studies but for some reason the solutions they use never scale to large countries. Whether it's China, Germany, the US, India or Russia there is this inherent chaotic nature to those places, brought about solely by their size. I come from one such place and when i visited Denmark i found its efficiency somewhat oppressive. This is a matter of getting used to but i suppose it also works the other way around as well, with people coming from these small efficient places being struck by how unorganized a big country can be.

Really good video, i have lived in Denmark my whole life and I can confirm this is all true. I must say tho that with some of the good things about Denmark you are telling also has it’s flaws that isn’t mentioned. *DISCLAIMER* The next section is in no way a form of hate, but more to tell other watchers of this video that Denmark is NOT perfect. But to make it perfect is not possible at this time. Also sorry for the bad grammar, punctuation and spelling :) The whole thing about the there is ALOT of stuff made digital in Denmark sound really nice, BUT there is some (properly of the alot) things that have become digital, has been bassicaly removed from being physical. This means that for some people, mostly elderly, who aren’t good with computers and/or internet, have struggled with things they could easily do a decade ago. For an example I will use my grandpa who has had struggles both under corona, getting the positive test results that were needed to do bassicaly anything in public, from getting to other countries to simple things like getting a haircut. To get those in physical forms he used nearly a week to get help on how to, do what was requried, waiting for things to go through and get accepted, to actually getting the physical positive test, which resulted in him having to get a new test and moving around plans like haircuts and resturant reservations etc. Not all bad tho, since the elderly and very young where the first to get vacines meaning they didn’t have to take new test all the time and he could do it once and be good for 6 months before getting the paper renewed. Also under corona he had to take new theori and drivers test to get his licence again (his got rewoked, bc when you hit 70 yr you need to do somethings so the government could make sure you’re still in good enough shape to be driving) But that is also digital which means he didn’t know he had to do these things, ultimately resulting in rewoking his licence. And also the websites mentioned in the video is not working that well, alot of ques, hard to navigate for many etc Now properly a more personal opinion but the whole thing with public transport and alot of biking is for some not voluntary because owning and buying a car in Denmark is a HUGE expense. Meaning that buying for an example a Ford Fiesta in Denmark cost nearly as much as buying a Mustang in the US, only bc of extra charges paid to the government. Again this is not hate, just wanted to give my perspective If anyone read all of this then thx for your time and have a wonderful day :)

This video should have been called "Why Copenhagen Is Insanely Well Designed". 99% of the video is not about Denmark but Copenhagen.

No... Denmark has *1.2 times* as much road/capita than the EU, not *12 times* as much, and that is perfectly in line with other low-mid density countries. Some common sense goes a long way. And what's this "WW2 devastation" you're talking about? Weren't literally like 2 buildings destroyed for the entirety of the war?

Great video. But the audio is very muffled, making it difficult to hear.

very impressed 👍

You can tell the quality of a video, whenever the narrator pronounces the words in Danish absolutely perfect without any accent.

I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if the money is spent properly by the government.

3:20 Femern belt bridge?

2:40 - Storebæltsbroen is still being paid off, however that's because the danish government has been using the bridge toll to finance construction of other infrastructure projects. It has paid for itself over one and a half times at this point, but the loan is expected to be repaid in 2034 :)

Well presented video. I would argue that the principles described in the video aren't all-encompassing for constructions in Denmark. The best example of the opposite is probably the land reclamation project of Lynetteholm. The plans for this peninsula should really be scrutinized a lot more, from the perspective of democracy, necessity, ecology, sustainability, use of space and the compliance with the Esbo-convention... Dig just outside of your Copenhagen residence and make a video about how Lynetteholm stands by the principles you've mentioned here. That would make for an interesting video.

Fake information btw, The UK Actually owns Majority of its railways 🚃

The online network and access of online public services in Denmark, is also the same in Norway and very familiar to the Danish online network. So Denmark isn’t alone, when it comes to the online network, access to public services and much more. So Norway and Denmark have the wide online network that gives every citizen accesses to the public services tools, online assets for business creation and much more. When it comes to taxes on annual income, the Norwegian 🇳🇴tax level for annual income is around 34% or lower. So it’s nearly identical to the Danish 🇩🇰taxation level and like you said in the video, it’s 10% higher tax level than the other OECD average. So Norway and Denmark shares very much allot of similarities, when comes to development, systematisations and value creation. They always says this: it’s good to be a Norwegian in Denmark. And also: it’s good to be a Dane in Norway. 😆 Det er deilig å være norsk i Danmark. 🇳🇴Det er dælig at være dansk i Norge! 🇩🇰

While living all my life in Lithuania, I always thought of the digitalisation of government services as the normal thing governments do. Yet here I am realizing that my small county with 2.5 million people is more digitally advanced than Denmark, we are using apps for parking, buses, and cards for YEARS now as this point.

Are you danish? your danish pronunciation is spot on

Lol, good you wrote the comment in the video, although why not just edit the narration. I would have loved to try the first supersonic train.

0:30 do the math Oliver! 12630/1100 is less than 11.5. So it is not over 12 times.

Yo yo yo, that is NOT a map of Spain, Portugal is there, be careful with the fallacy, what you say is Spain is the Iberian Peninsula, which has Spain, Portugal and even Andorra...

God video! Godt arbejde 🤌🏻

I love that its a dane who is Talking Great about his own country. I am Also from Denmark and i Can say that you are missing some very Big mistakes that we also have with our roads. But i Can stil say that you are right about Many things.

It's that it's a small and flat country, and small ones are easier to build roads in compared to large countries like the USA, Canada, or Australia.

Wonder where all of this wonderful planning went when they where building Letbanen.

4:03 you keep calling it a bridge… but it’s clearly a tunnel project hahaha

Bruuh stop hating on the Uk

Copenhagen is far from utopia. It is fugly expensive.

Great and interesting video. A small detail. I don't know why you use the word "digitise", when the word you are looking for is "digitilise". The former is just when converting something physical into something digital, whereas the latter is the whole transformation and is oftencase the word people should use.

We live in a stable country, where SO many things are free and working well.... yes it's definitely worth the price.

Denmark has one of the lowest immigrant populations in Western Europe, so there's fewer of them to ruin the system. The European countries with the highest immigrant populations are all suffering the worst. No coincidence, statistics don't lie.

4:05 The Fehmarn belt link will *NOT* affect congestion in Copenhagen at all. Traffic from Malmö will use the exact same route as before.

The way your able to switch from danish to english with a perfect accent in both amazes me

Denmark has really reached near-pinnacle of the society tech tree.

So DSB ended up having huge problems in the start of the 2000's with many delays etc. and we're basically back at it again, these last 4-6 years, lmao. Almost every train i've taken the last month has been delayed by at least 10 minutes

i was literally thinking to myself "damn i wonder hos those maps are made, and the outline animations around the countries and stuff" and then an ad about it comes😭

Tak for endnu en god video. Jeg tænkte på om du på et tidspunkt også kommer til Nebula? Der er større udbetaling til den enkelte creator og platformen støtter også større projekter (Originals)

Cool concept for 🇩🇰