LEGO Bicycle Culture

You'd expect LEGO, being Danish, to have featured the bicycle amongst their products. There are no bicycles in my boy's 10 kg pile of LEGO - a potpourri of Lego spanning 35 years and including the new stuff, my childhood lego and my little brothers, too - but I've seen them before. So a little googling brought me to this nerdy website listing sets that include LEGO bicycles. I slapped a number of the photos into the graphic above and included a couple of images I found on the internet.

My favourite is at bottom left. A petrol station shop. A cyclist pedals calmly away carrying an ice cream in one hand and fresh flowers in her panniers. She is glancing over at a motorist who can't control his vehicle and who, it appears, forgot his change. I like the contrast.

Above there is Café Corner, with a bike parked out front, of course.

Two of the shots feature merchandising for the German Team Telekom from back in 2000. The Tour de France is [has been] such a major cultural event in Europe for so long and Germany is one of LEGO's biggest markets so no surprise about this merchandising marriage.

At the bottom right are a collection of Community Workers featuring three bikes, including a cop and a fireman on bikes as well as two mechanics.

I've probably posted this before, but if you go to the Danish Legoland, you'll see Copenhagen Cycle Chic in brick form.

And you'll see LEGO's hommage to me. :-)

Driving Kills - Health Warnings

I think it's safe to say that we have a pressing need for marketing cycling positively if we're to encourage people to ride bicycles and begin the transformation of our cities into more liveable places. Instead of scare campaigns about cycling [a life-extending, healthy, sustainable transport form], wouldn't it be more appropriate to begin campaigns about the dangers of automobiles? Many people in car-centric countries no longer regard cars as dangerous. Maybe they realise it, but the car is such an ingrained part of the culture that the perception of danger rarely rises to the surface of peoples consciousness. Sure, there are scare campaigns for cars out there, but what if we just cut to the chase? Much like smoking. Only a couple of decades ago, cigarettes were an integral part of life, whether you smoked or not. That has changed radically. We think that we could borrow freely from the health warnings now found on cigarette packs around the world. In order to be tho...

Overcomplicating Winter Cycling - Why It's Bad

One of the main focuses of this blog has always been on how Copenhagen and other cities have succeeded in increasing cycling levels by approaching the subject using mainstream marketing techniques. Tried and tested marketing that has existed since homo sapiens first started selling or trading stuff to each other. Modern bicycle advocacy, by and large, is flawed. It is firmly inspired by environmentalism which, in turn, is the greatest marketing flop in the history of humankind. Four decades of sub-cultural finger-wagging, guilt trips and preaching have given few results among the general population. When sub-cultural groups start trying to indoctrinate and convert the public, it rarely ever succeeds. For the better part of a century, people all over the planet rode bicycles because they were quick, easy, convenient and enjoyable. In hilly cities. In hot cities. In snowy cities. After the bicycle largely disappeared from the urban landscape because urban planning s...

7550 New Bike Parking Spots at Copenhagen Central Station

For all of Copenhagen's badassness as a bicycle city, there remains one thing that the City still completely sucks at. Bicycle parking at train stations. At Copenhagen Central Station there are only about 1000 bike parking spots. Danish State Railways can't even tell us how many spots they have. They're not sure. Even in Basel they have 800+. In Antwerp they have this . Don't even get me started on the Dutch. 12,500 bike parking spots are on the way in some place called Utrecht . Amsterdam has a multi-story bike parking facility, floating bicycle barges round the back and are planning 7000 more spots underwater . Even at the nation's busiest train station, Nørreport, the recent and fancy redesign failed miserably in providing parking that is adequate for the demand . Architects once again failing to respond to actual urban needs. It is time to remedy that. Here is my design for 7550 bike parking spots behind Copenhagen Central Station. Steve C. Montebello i...

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