If you stroll around Copenhagen’s lakes today, you’ll see joggers, cyclists, families with strollers, tinderdates drinking coffee and students sitting by the water. The lakes are a calm breathing space in the middle of a dense city. But in the 1960s and 70s, these same lakes were nearly transformed into something else entirely: a six-lane highway.

It even had a name: Søringen.

The City Plan Vest and Søringen by the Lakes

A Vision of the Car City

The post-war decades were defined by modernist urbanism. Like cities across Europe and North America, Copenhagen embraced the car as a symbol of progress. The 1947 Finger Plan laid the foundation for suburban expansion, but it also sketched a future motorring and heavy car corridors leading into the city. By the late 1950s, a plan had emerged for a major traffic artery through the heart of Copenhagen. City Plan Vest proposed clearing large parts of Vesterbro for modernist high-rises, building a business district around the central station, and driving a motorway along the lakes to connect it all.

Søringen would run from the north of Copenhagen through our biggest park, Fælledparken, continue along the lakes, linking to the (existing highway brige) Bispeengbuen before stretching further south.

Copenhagen’s Borgerrepræsentation approved the idea in 1959. The parlament followed with an enabling law in 1964. Supporters included powerful figures like the mayor Urban Hansen and the mayor of urban planning Alfred Wassard Jørgensen.

In the words of one of the era’s engineers, Søringen promised to “solve Copenhagen’s traffic problems once and for all.”

At first, the project was proposed as a 12-lane highway leading to massive destruction of current buildings

A City Divided

But Søringen also had fierce opponents. Among them was Kai Lemberg, later general plan director for Copenhagen, who called the project “an atrocity against the inner city.”

“I am most proud of being one of the destroyers of the motorway through Copenhagen, that could well deserve a statue,”
– Kai Lemberg

Lemberg argued that the motorway would create unbearable noise and destroy the city’s livability. He managed to convince his political superiors to commission a noise study, which showed that 40–50,000 people would be exposed to severe noise pollution if Søringen was built. That evidence became decisive.

At the same time, citizens began mobilizing. Protests erupted when whole blocks, including Fredensgade near Nørrebro, were demolished in anticipation of Søringen. That same block now lies as a reminder of what could have been, now in the shape of a park called Fredens Park, literally meaning the park of peace. People could already see the damage caused by Bispeengbuen, completed in 1972, which sliced through dense neighborhoods at second-floor height. If this was the future, many didn’t want it.

The Legacy of Resistance

Demonstrators against Søringen. The sign reads: Søringen a scandalous plague ring.
In the back: Should Copenhagen perish in smoke and steam?

The fight against Søringen also showed that citizens and progressive planners could change the course of the city. Figures like Lemberg demonstrated that even within the system, it was possible to push back against the dominant car-first ideology. But resistance came not only from inside City Hall - it also came from the streets.

When the city cleared parts of Fredensgade in 1973 to make way for Søringen, residents and activists organized demonstrations, demanding that their neighborhoods and everyday urban life not be sacrificed for a motorway. Placards, petitions, and local meetings spread across Nørrebro and Østerbro, echoing a broader international wave of urban protest against destructive road projects. And when Bispeengbuen opened in 1972, rising at second-floor height through dense housing, it became a rallying symbol of what Copenhagen risked losing. The protests were not just about a road, but about the right to the city itself.

In his memoirs, Græsrod i magtsystemet (“Grassroots in the Power System”), Lemberg described City Plan Vest and Søringen as “environmentally repulsive, short-sighted, and extremely costly.” His loyalty as a civil servant forced him to analyze the project, but his conviction drove him to undermine it at every turn.

It is striking that Copenhagen’s identity today as a green, human-centered capital owes so much to a plan that never happened and to the citizens who refused to accept it.

The Project’s Collapse

By the early 1970s, Søringen faced mounting headwinds:

Citizen protests grew stronger, fueled by anger at demolitions and the sight of Bispeengbuen.
Economic reality shifted. The 1973 oil crisis and general downturn made the project financially unattractive.
Political priorities changed. Even Alfred Wassard Jørgensen, once a supporter, declared Søringen dead in 1974.
National politics intervened. The social democratic traffic minister Jens Kampmann, formally put an end to the project in 1973.

As Lemberg later reflected, Søringen collapsed because of a perfect storm: rising costs, economic crisis, public opposition, and a new awareness of environmental and urban quality issues.

What Was at Stake

Bispeengbuen, completed in 1972, a current debated highway, that would have connected to Søringen, that shows what much of Copenhagen could have looked like. There are ongoing debates to tear it down.

Had Søringen been built, Copenhagen would look very different today.

The lakes would be flanked by a raised motorway instead of promenades.
Much of Vesterbro’s 19th-century fabric would have been demolished and replaced with modernist high-rises.
Traffic would dominate the city’s center, rather than being pushed to the edges.

It’s not hard to imagine Copenhagen following the path of Stockholm’s Norrmalm, where a whole district was remade into a car-dominated modernist cityscape.

Instead, Copenhagen pivoted. From the 1970s onwards, the city began cautiously experimenting with pedestrian streets, cycling infrastructure, and a renewed emphasis on livability. Søringen became a symbol of what the city chose not to do.

Lessons for Today

Runners and walkers around the lakes on a sunny autumn day

Søringen matters not only as history, but as a lesson for current debates.

Cities today still face proposals for big infrastructure that promise to “solve traffic once and for all.” Whether in the form of tunnels, ring roads, or massive interchanges, the logic is the same as in the 1960s.

Current politicians running for mayor of Copenhagen in the 2025 municipal election are proposing more car-parking for all, presenting it as a simple fix for congestion and everyday frustrations. But just as more highways lead to more cars, more parking does the same. It locks the city into higher car use, more noise, and more emissions. The debate echoes the logic behind Søringen: expanding car capacity in the name of solving traffic. Then as now, the promise is attractive to voters, but the outcome is predictable - more cars, not fewer.

The cancellation of Søringen was not just a victory for one neighborhood — it set the stage for a different model of city-making. The absence of the motorway preserved the lakes, saved Vesterbro’s fabric, and created the conditions for Copenhagen’s later turn toward livability. When we look at the lakes today, it’s tempting to take them for granted. But their survival as public space is the result of contested politics and hard-fought battles.

Copenhagen almost chose the motorway. Instead, it chose the city. And that choice continues to define its global reputation today.

On a Nordic Path tour, you can explore how Copenhagen nearly transformed itself into a car-dominated city and how the rejection of projects like Søringen opened the way for a very different urban future. The city’s history of cancelled motorways, shifting plans, and grassroots resistance comes to life when seen in the context of today’s livable streets.

Learn more

What If? The Highway That Could Have Split Copenhagen in Two