The Life-Sized City Blog

Goodbye, Bycyklen . After 17 years, Copenhagen's renowned bike share system is being pulled off the streets of the city for the winter - and it ain't coming back. As we all know, La Rochelle, France was the first city to establish a permanent bike share system back in the mid 1970s . Sure, there were some hippie attempts in the 1960s) but Copenhagen's Bycyklen was the first system in a large city that involved a deposit system. With a 10 or 20 kroner coin you could unlock a bike and ride off. Nostalgia strikes quickly. The goofiest bicycles in history have only been gone for a few hours but I already miss them. I miss being late for a meeting or just wanting to get home and having to trail behind a wobbly Italian family of four happily enjoying the cycle tracks. The entire width of them. Until we reached an intersection or a wider stretch and I - together with 150 other Copenhageners - could overtake them. I miss seeing them in the far reaches of the city - far fr

Here is an updated article about this topic over at Medium.com: Longing for a Return to the Danish 180% Tax on New Cars --- Much is said and reblogged/tweeted about the famous 180% on cars in Denmark. Back when rationality was fashionable, this series of taxes was put into place to try and discourage people from driving but also to try and win some money back for society for the destructive nature of automobiles. We know, for example, that for every kilometre ridden by bike, the Danish coffers recieve 23 cents. For every kilometre driven by car, the Danish state pays out 16 cents. Those numbers are from the "Socio-economic analyses of bicycle initiatives - methods and cases", produced by COWI in 2009. For a more local feel, if you ride in Copenhagen from Øster Allé to Nørreport during rush hour here's the societal benefit and loss: Bicycle: 63 cents net profit for society. (3.65 DKK) Car: $1.15 net loss to society. (6.59 DKK) Another way of calculating it

Mogens Knudsen, Operativ leder i færdelspolitiet ved Københavns Politi There's a man in Copenhagen named Mogens. Mogens Knudsen. What's interesting about this man is that virtually every single day he goes to work he hurts and, in many situations, kills people. Indirectly, of course. What's more, Mogens actually gets paid to do so. He is a civil servant with a badge. A policeman. The head of the Traffic Dept in Copenhagen Police. Mogens is not particularly fond of those fellow citizens of his who ride bicycles in Copenhagen. He has for many years and has always been vocal about it. If Mogens seems scary, it gets worse. Mogens has colleagues who feel the same way and who also get paid to dish out injury and, in worst cases, death. Mogens and his colleagues make the Danish Road Safety Council's crusade against Danish bicycle culture look like piecemeal. Welcome to the Danish Police. Welcome to The New Copenhagen . By all accounts, Mogens and police seem to

DEPRESSING UPDATE - 13 MAY 2013 - SCROLL TO BOTTOM Frederiksberg. The city is an municipal island surrounded by Copenhagen and with its 90,000 residents, it is Denmark's most densely-populated city. Generally, the city is good at providing for cycling and around 35% of the residents cycle to work or school. This is the city in which I live and where Copenhagenize Design Co. has it's offices. There are, however, problems that need solving and there is no solutions on the way. One of them is highlighted here in this article. Even though only 35% of the population of the city own cars (the number is 29% for Copenhagen), the main arteries are clogged with cars and trucks all through the day. Over 26,000 drive past my windows each day. Almost all of them are "parasites", as Italian traffic planners call them . When I looked out the window at the intersection between Nordre Fasanvej and Godthåbsvej (above) I was pleased to see that work was underway on resurfacing

So, slapped up a Copenhagenize Love Handle in Amsterdam last week, when I was speaking at the brilliant Blogging the City conference. As I promised the audience. Maybe it's still there. Maybe it's not. Let us know if you see it. More on the Love Handles can be read here . The Blogging the City conference , organised by Jeroen Beekmans & Joop de Boer of The Pop-Up City , featured a great line-up of speakers. - Brilliant talk by Charlie Hilton of Urban Times . - Zef Heme l head of the urban planning department of the City of Amsterdam, and blogger at Vrijstaat Amsterdam . - Stefan Höffken from Urbanophil talked about his work and inspiration. - Wouter Boon talked about his successful Amsterdam Ad Blog . - Antonia Märzhäuser on the always brilliant and fascinating Freunde von Freunden site . - Régine Debatty highlighted the story of her inspiration for her blog we-make-money-not-art - Luc Harings from IloveNoord.nl about placemaking and civic pride. -