Is Urban Mobility A Human Right?

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 surely allowing all citizens to exercise freedom of mobility involves making the urban landscape safe. Which means restricting the movements of the dangerous, life-threatening player in town - automobile traffic - instead of the movements of pedestrians and, in some ways, cyclists.

Should pedestrians and cyclists have the priority in cities and towns for choosing sustainable transport forms? Should infrastructure for cyclists of all ages not be a priority in urban planning?

Is Safe Urban Mobility a human right?

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...

The New Question for 21st Century Cities

It's all so simple if we want it to be. For almost a century we have been asking the same question in our cities. "How many cars can we move down a street?" It's time to change the question. If you ask "How many PEOPLE can we move down a street?", the answer becomes much more modern and visionary. And simple. Oh, and cheaper. Let alone the fact that the model at the top can move 10 times more people down a street than the model at the bottom. When I travel with my Bicycle Urbanism by Design keynote , I often step on the toes of traffic engineers all around the world. Not all of them, however. I am always approached by engineers who are grateful that someone is questioning the unchanged nature of traffic engineering and the unmerited emphasis placed on it. I find it brilliant that individual traffic engineers in six different nations have all said the same thing to me: "We're problem solvers. But we're only ever asked to solve the sam...

The Race for Lithium for Electric Cars and Bicycles

Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia. Photo: Ezequiel Cabrera/Wikipedia The coming boom in batteries to electric cars and Lazy Bikes (electric-assist bicycles) means a boom in batteries with which to run them. A new race for natural resources has begun. Enter Lithium, the world's lightest metal. For 150 years it's been nickel and lead that have been used in batteries but the advent of lithium technology has allowed for a revolution. Longer battery life, lighter batteries in our laptaps and mobile phones and iPods. Lithium weighs 1/20th of what nickel and lead do. Lithium is also used in anti-depressive medicine, ceramics and nuclear power. With all this talk of electric cars and bicycles, the demand for lithium is on the verge of exploding. Lithium is the new oil. Enter Boliva. This developing country sits on at least half of the world's supply of lithium, most of it in underground salt layers beneath the world's largest salt flats in Salar de Uyuni , in south-west Boliva. Betwee...

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