OK …. just to get shot of some of the negative posts in my to-do tray.

This is Kalvebod Brygge.

What a waste of an amazing frontage to the harbour. The quay faces south-east so is bathed in light reflected off the water so, in theory, it’s the sort of site any developer should be prepared to die for.

Some of the buildings are good and would grace any ordinary downtown office area but as part of a large group here they are more than uninspiring. To be fair, there are understandable excuses or at least good reasons. This is a narrow strip of land that by the 1970s was trapped between a dock road that had become a major entry into the city - so had and still has heavy traffic - and a stretch of harbour that might have been developed commercially in the 1950s or 1960s if container ships had not got so big or Køge bay was not so shallow. If you look at photographs from the mid 1950s, when the new bridge at Langebro was completed, then you can see why planners and the city thought almost anything would be better than what was here and when work started on the buildings it was well before harbour-side apartment buildings became the money earners they have become.

Langebro in 1956 - just after the new bridge opened - with the tower of what was then the new Europa Hotel and is now Danhostel Hotel on the city side of the bridge and with Kalvebod Brygge beyond

What is less easy to understand is more recent development behind on a second narrow strip of land that runs parallel on the other side of that dock road, between the road and the main railway line into the central station from the west.

The Tivoloi conference centre and a new hotel - Copenhagen Cabinn - should be near the top on any list of the ugliest buildings in the city and I'm not convinced that the redevelopment of the old post office site at the east end will help.

Beauty is not everything but people should want to be here and should enjoy being here. It’s not even clear these buildings even have a viable and useful future as office buildings when, post virus, large office buildings are probably what people don't need or want.

The quay itself is now part of the long and carefully-planned bike route round the harbour and the rapid development of new housing around the south harbour, further out down the harbour, is bringing more people through here on their way into the city but is that enough?

What Kalvebod Brygge needs is a long-term development plan with strong planning controls. That's not just control over plot boundaries on land that had been bundled up in convenient lots for the highest bidder or even about controlling building use. A new inner-city IKEA store is still in the pipe line with a new bus station that seems to be oddly located and, maybe or maybe not, there will be much-needed student housing … but more important, there should have been controls over heights, sight lines, massing and connections - visually and physically - between buildings.

Danish urban landscaping is some of the best in the World but I'm not convinced that the right planting and some good seating will pull this little lot together.

Generally, the tight street layout of the first stage of development in Nordhavn, now near completion, actually works.

Somehow it seems appropriate with strong and distinct architecture and with buildings huddled together against the worst weather the sea can throw at it. Maybe that's too romantic and optimistic a description - too like the prose of a travel brochure - but there are some good buildings here including The Silo and the new metro station at Orientkaj - both by COBE who also produced the initial area plan - although I'm still not completely convinced by the shocking blue of the International School by CF Møller.

But why oh why are the new apartment buildings along Sandkaj so boring?

Sandkaj is the south facing quay, and these apartments look across Nordhavn Bassin to the UN building, so what a waste of an amazing location. It's as if a planning assistant was given a box of perfectly functional but uninspiring apartment buildings and had to put them out for the punters. This is like spreading out magazines in a dentist’s waiting room.

It did not need much … just a bit of thought and more careful arrangement of the blocks with a bit of height somewhere and a bit of recession - so a bit of shadow - and certainly a coherent and a bolder use of colour and texture. Choosing an apartment here must be like picking out a suit on a long rail of basically identical grey suits in a department store. Here's one with two bedrooms and a balcony in pale brick or here's one with two bedrooms and a balcony in a slightly darker brick or how about this one with two bedrooms and a balcony ………….

As for Carlsberg City ..… that is panning out to be a travesty with development at any cost with good planning sacrificed so a lost opportunity of the worst kind and the most scandalous waste of an amazing site and a waste of some of the most astonishing and quirky industrial buildings in the world. Maybe more about Carlsberg City another time. I have to worry about my blood pressure.