Jay Wallljasper: Hibernation discouraged

With the festivities of the holiday season behind us, we now face the long, dark, cold days of January and February. No more songs celebrating sleigh rides or snowfalls. We hunker down indoors, counting the days until spring.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Plunging temperatures don't necessarily sentence us to months of house arrest. People around the world from Copenhagen to New York are figuring out how to keep things lively throughout the colder months. City streets bustle with festivals and outdoor attractions showing that winter is something to enjoy rather than endure.

My colleague Cynthia Nikitin, vice president of Project for Public Spaces, describes Berlin in the dead of winter: "It gets dark at 3:30. It's snowing like crazy. But it's no problem. People are playing bocce ball on the ice. There are tents selling hot mulled wine. You are walking down the street just watching all the other people. Life is good, and winter feels good, too."

But you need to give people reasons to be outside, Nikitin adds -- "a market, ice skating, music, decorative lighting. No one will stay outdoors to stare at an empty plaza."

In an increasingly globalized economy where businesses and skilled workers now have a choice in where they locate, Frost Belt cities can't afford to appear lifeless for a quarter of the year. Places like Minneapolis can no longer pretend that winter doesn't exist. It is essential to make the city inviting all year, not just when it's warm.

A lack of imagination -- not wind chill, early sunsets or deep snow -- is the biggest problem facing winter cities, according to Gil Penalosa, former parks director of Bogota, Colombia, who has happily adapted to the colder climes of suburban Toronto, where he is president of Walk and Bike For Life. "Winter is really a question of mental attitude today," he says. "Thanks to new lightweight warm clothes, you don't have to pile on thick coats and three layers of mufflers like you once did. It's much easier to enjoy yourself outside. It's really up to you how much fun you have in winter."

Penalosa visited Minnesota this fall for a series of meetings about how to improve Minneapolis as a winter city, sponsored by the Urban Land Institute-Minnesota, the citizens group Walking Minneapolis and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

When I visited the Danish capital several Januarys ago, I found downtown streets alive with people even on an inclement Thursday evening. The wind was blowing hard enough to knock down most of the parked bikes (a third of the city's residents cycle to work during winter, down from 50 percent the rest of the year), but no one seemed to care. Elderly couples were strolling, arm in arm. Parents pushed baby buggies. Beautifully dressed women floated past, showing off the latest winter fashions. An impromptu jam session with balalaika and guitar drew onlookers in a square. Incredibly, a few people sat outside at sidewalk cafes sipping warm drinks.

Danes aren't any hardier than the rest of us, notes Gehl; it's simply that Danish cities over the past few years have created or refurbished many great public places -- plazas, parks, lively shopping streets, waterfront districts-- where people want to hang out even when it's freezing. "Climates differ all over the world," he says. "But people are the same. They will gather in public if you give them a good place to do it."

That's why Gehl is no fan of Minneapolis' skyways. "When you glass in the city, you eliminate the 'bad' days but also all the 'good' days. That is too much of a price to pay. You miss the fresh air, the street life. You may have 20 bad days a year when you want to stay indoors, but 200 good ones you miss. I say you make the city as good as possible for the good days, and that will carry it through on the bad days."

Gehl notes how the season of "good" weather in Copenhagen has expanded from six to more than 10 months a year. It's not that the weather has changed, the city has. Planners are paying more attention to minimizing the wind and maximizing the sun in public spaces, which encourage folks not to retreat indoors at the first sign of a snow flurry. Merchants string decorative lights that shine all winter. Cafe owners install gas heaters at their sidewalk tables, and provide patrons who want to sit outdoors with blankets in which to bundle up.

Hard as it is to admit, Minneapolis can learn a few things from St. Paul. The Winter Carnival celebrates the season's potential for fun. Great year-round public spaces such as Rice Park, beautifully lit with bright lights, and the skating rink next to Landmark Center offer urban sparkle on even the coldest evenings.