The Life-Sized City Blog

The winning design for a new bicycle bridge over Copenhagen's Inner Harbour. The current efforts of the city of Copenhagen to encourage more citizens to choose the bicycle have given us a lot of new, exciting infrastructure, not least in the form of bridges. Now there are four new bridges on the way exclusively for bicycles and pedestrians. For example above, at left, is Åbuen, a bicycle/pedestrian bridge over the busy Å Boulevard which is part of the Green Path bicycle motorway . At right is Bryggebroen, the bridge over the harbour from the Vesterbro neighbourhood to Iceland Quay. The latter features almost 10,000 cyclists a day and that's expected to increase when the infrastructure link to the existing bicycle lanes is completed on the north side. There are, of course, main bridges over the harbour. Langebro and Knippels Bridge both have over 20,000 cyclists a day each on the bike lanes parallel to the car lanes but the two bicycle/pedestrian bridges pictured above have cre...

The Car Empire strikes back again. My friend Troels found this Volkswagen advert in an glossy book about great advertising campaigns from around the world. In it, Volkswagen are keen to show off various features on their cars. In this case, Energy-Absorbing Door Padding. To illustrate this exciting feature, they highlight one of the great irritations that motorists face in the urban environment, visible at just left of centre in the photo. Fortunately for the motorist getting out of his fine vehicle he has invested in German engineering to reduce potential damage to his vehicle. Nevermind that he didn't bother to check his mirror before getting out or that the inattentive man on the bicycle risks injury from what we are led to assume will be an imminent collison. Energy-absorbing door padding will save the car from too much damage. How does the esteemed panel of readers feel about this photograph/campaign? It's clearly ' ignoring the bull ' and placing responsibility on...

I suppose we could discuss whether or not this is 'ignoring the bull' or not... :-) In the winter in Copenhagen, protective shields are placed around all the roadside trees in order to protect them from cars splashing salty water and slush. It's one of those tiny details that most people don't think about and yet which would appear to be an expensive process - putting them up and taking them down in the spring. All to protect the trees from salt. I like the idea. Perhaps we could begin a 'splash tax' for motorists to pay for it. Here's another variation.

Photo: Maximilien Brice, © CERN I like the simple contrast in this photo. A man working on the CERN Large Hadron Collider - one of the most impressive engineering projects in history with it's 27 km long circular tunnel that is 175 metres underground beneath France and Switzerland. It is built to carry out one of the boldest scientific experiments in history. And the man pedalled to work on that bicycle there on the left. Or as Evan, who sent us the link, puts it: "Seeing this photo of a fellow member of the world's scientific community, I can't decide if I'm more jealous of the trails he gets to ride or of the fantastic LHC he's repairing." Indeed. A propos nothing, CERN has quite a cool kids website with science games 'n stuff .

Bicycle policemen. "The Police Cycle Training Doctrine" is a 93 page instruction manual, produced by 'well-meaning officers' in the UK. Basically, 93 pages - in two volumes! - about how to ride a bicycle. Needless to say, the British press are having a field day. The Daily Mail's article is titled: Police officers get 93-page guide ... on how to ride a bike (and it cost thousands of pounds to produce) and The Guardian has its Police beat off criticism about 93-page manual on how to ride a bike article. The Sun is ... well... rather 'Sunnish' by writing, " The bonkers bike book for bobbies " Taxpayers' Alliance campaign director Mark Wallace said: "This is an absurd waste of police time and thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money. "Police officers are perfectly capable of riding a bike. It's no wonder we haven't enough on the beat if they are having to spend time and energy wading through this nonsense." A Home Off...

When I was invited to speak in New York recently, one of the lectures was about behaviour and the challenges of changing it. I figured I'd slap the lecture onto the blog. Behaviour is a tricky subject and getting groups of people to change their behaviour is never easy. Lately, behaviour is a hot topic in Emerging Bicycle Cultures. Many people who ride bicycles are generating bad press because of the way they're cycling and many other cyclists are getting branded negatively by association. Generally, bad behaviour is a sign that cyclists don't have adequate infrastructure. Increasing cycling's infrastructure and profile is a good way to calm the traffic in more ways than one. We're at an interesting point in the reestablishment of urban cycling as a norm. Bicycles have been a fad, a trend, for almost two years now. There is every indication that we are finally returning to a place where the bicycle is regarded as a respected, accepted and feasible transport f...

The Copenhagen Central Station has been the most massive bicycle magnet in the country for a century. The streets around the station are flooded with bicycles. Plans were revealed today for a new parking complex with room for... 7000 bicycles! behind the station. »Now more than ever there is a need for bike parking at the train stations and the problem won't get better with the coming Metro extension construction around the city", said Klaus Bondam - Mayor in charge of the Dept. of Transport. The idea is to widen the bridge behind the station - Tietgensbroen - so that it covers more of the railyard. The design for the new bicycle parking will be decided through an architecture competition that will start in the new year. The parking complex is expected to be finished in 2013. It will be financed by the City of Copenhagen, Danish State Railways and Banedanmark. 7000!

Now we're talking. The City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Office launched an exciting pilot project today in the Vesterbro neighbourhood of the city. Enter: The Cargo Bike Car. Secure parking for four cargo bikes in the same space on the street that one car takes up. The symbolism speaks for itself. You park your cargo bike inside a car. Brilliant. Copenhagen is cargo bike heaven. Copenhagenize.com's Flickr set - Danish Cargo Bike Culture - will attest to that. The City's Bicycle Office is keen to improve conditions for the city's cargo bike owners. The number of cargo bikes on the streets has exploded and 6% of all households in the city own at least one cargo bike. Copenhagenize.com estimates that there are roughly 30,000 cargo bikes in the city. Actually, 25% of families with two or more children have a cargo bike and 50% of all Copenhageners with a cargo bike use it to transport children. Interestingly, only 2% of Copenhagen cyclists find cargo bikes irrit...

This essay by Ivan Illich was first published in 1973, in Le Monde. In the previous guest essay The Social Ideology of the Motorcar by André Gorz , a number of references were made to Illich. This is the essay he was referring to. Thanks to our reader, John, for the link. Read the whole thing but I'm going to just jump right to the last sentence. It's quite brilliant. "Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle." Energy Crisis by Ivan Illich First Chapter of Energy and Equity, first published in Le Monde in early 1973. It has recently become fashionable to insist on an impending energy crisis. This euphemistic term conceals a contradiction and consecrates an illusion. It masks the contradiction implicit in the joint pursuit of equity and industrial growth. It safeguards the illusion that machine power can indefinitely take the place of manpower. To resolve this co...

This essay by André Gorz, the French philosopher who pioneered ideas of political ecology, was first published in 1973 in Le Sauvage . Much of it is still applicable today and well worth a read. The Social Ideology of the Motorcar by André Gorz The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated i...

A reader mentioned pedestrian flags in Berkeley, California in a comment and added "I'm serious!" so I thought I'd check out this fantastic example of victim blaming in Bubble Wrap Society. He was serious. Is that scary or funny or both? Not sure. Flags are placed near intersections and the idea is that pedestrians pick one up and hold it when they wish to foolishly exercise their human right to safe urban mobility . Most of the flags have been stolen and few use them apparently. Ironically, 48 hours after these went into [non]use, a pedestrian was hit by a car. Here's what Berkeley City Councilwoman Polly Armstrong said about it at the time: "We hope over time - when drivers are paying a little more attention than that driver was - that the flags would be helpful." She added that, "Pedestrians have to be on guard and aggressive with their flags." "After hitting the pedestrian, the driver swerved into the oncoming lane and collided with ...

Once you start getting into traffic safety it becomes a Pandora's box with a very loose lid. Daylight Running Lights. This is a new one for me. Laws requiring cars to have their headlights on all the time. Living in Denmark, this is normal. All cars have their headlights on and are equipped with systems that turn them on as soon as you start the car. I remember driving a Danish car in Spain and so many kind motorists and pedestrians kept gesturing to me that my lights were on but I didn't know how to turn them off. I always figured that given the limited light in the winter [and fall and spring] in Scandinavia, this was a good idea. So discovering an entire movement against Daylight Running Lights was a surprise and an interesting one at that. Our reader Charlie sent a link in the comments section of this post . This website called Drivers Against Daytime Running Lights is quite clear about their opposition to potential laws. I have a default setting that causes me to be scept...

I've not seen such cool bike parking in ages. At my hotel in San Francisco - the W Hotel - they have three Danish Biomega bicycles for guests to use free. Okay, three isn't much, but it's what they do with them that counts. It's like a museum the way they hang them up on the wall like that. You ask the valet for a bicycle and he walks over with a crank and proceeds to lower - slowly and cerimoniously - the bicycle to the ground. Now THAT is style over speed! I rode the bicycle during the Halloween Critical Mass and the next day, too, with some friends. A one-speed on the hills of San Francisco. Easy peasy. Here's what other bikes I've been riding whilst travelling .

The further development of Bubble Wrap Society seems to be in full swing all over the world. The buzz about the bicycle over the past 18 months or so has seemingly given rise to increased buzz about bubble-wrapping the vulnerable traffic users like pedestrians and cyclists. It's a kind of counter-attack, not unlike the Audi advert we blogged about recently. Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic and the blog How We Drive has a telling article in Slate about the current cause célèbre among motorists and authorities - cracking down on jaywalking. In his In Defence of Jaywalking Tom covers the new hype about these foolish souls who dare to inconvienence motorists by crossing streets where they're 'not supposed to' are under fire. Which brings us to the question. Is Urban Mobility a basic human right? Do we not have the right to move about the urban landscape as we see fit? It has been so for most of human history, after all. If the answer is yes to that question, then surel...