The Life-Sized City Blog

The Hungarians do it again. New advert for Bike to Workk campaign. As we've said before, the Hungarians are world champions in promoting cycling positively - check out this previous article about it . The message on this new one is, quite simply: "You can cure your lack of exercise. Bike to Work!" Cool style. Go, Hungary! Thanks to Aron at Hungarian Cycle Chic for the link.

Last week, on April 14, 2012, the first stretch of Copenhagen's new and long-awaited Bicycle Superhighway network opened and Copenhagenize was there for the bike ride. It was back in 2009 that we first wrote about the plans for these bicycle superhighways . The boys at Trunk films made this cool film that includes the Superhigways project . The project has taken time to develop but now the routes are getting ready for use. In addition, when we first wrote about it, there were plans for 13 routes. That has now been increased to 26. 300 km of dedicated superhighway routes when the project is complete. The 17.5 km Albertslund Route is the first one to launch. The route runs through a number of municipalities, including Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Albertslund and Rødovre. They are being called Bicycle Superhighways, but it's worth noting that the routes follow existing, separated bicycle infrastructure. There will be some improvements on certain sections and various faciliti

Brilliantly simple and effective video about the societal costs of automobile use. Filled with nuggets of wisdom, effectively communicated. Love the bit about how cars are like gasses - it doesn't matter how large the container grows, the molecules will still occupy the whole space. Build more roads, more cars come. Welcome to Square One. Amazing how after 75 years of traffic engineers and planners failing constantly and consistently at solving traffic problems, we still give them outrageous amounts of funding to keep... failing. Seriously, what other vocation in the world gets so much money to play with without having produced ANY results for three quarters of a century? The Mexican office of the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) produced this film - in Spanish with English subtitles. Thanks to Ludwig from UITP for the link .

What IS it about Antwerp? Like I've been blogging about, it's quite a suprising city on so many levels. Here's another example. While many "bicycle enthusiasts" get all neo-sanctimonious about bicycles, let's see how "religious enthusiasts" use the bicycle. Oh, wait... they use it just like any other Citizen Cyclist.  The Muslim community in the Borgerhout neighourhood of Antwerp arranged a bike ride. Participants paid €2 to take part and the proceeds went to a school project in Kebdana, a village in Northern Morocco. They also hoped to promote better bicycle facilities and parking, as well as bringing all the different people in the community together. The Fietsersbond donated two bikes to Kebdana and two others to teach new arrivals from Morocco how to cycle. My friend Stef, from the Belgian NGO Fietsersbond.be took these shots a few weeks back. The ride went past six different mosques and it was promoted by the imams - top photo.