The Life-Sized City Blog

There is a brilliant article that you simply must read. A Strange and Not Unpleasant Experience by Florence Williams for Bicycling.com What's a cyclist to do upon falling in love with the rare Pedersen bike--except rescue a battered one from a hippie paradise and cajole its mysterious creator into reviving it? What a fantastic tale. Here's more of my photos of Pedersen bicycles . Didn't get a shot of Florence on hers - we couldn't manage to hook up when she was in Copenhagen.

View Bike Shops in My Neighbourhood in a larger map Addendum: 23 December 2013: The original count was 27, but I've been discovering more and more bike shops. I will now put the number at 40+. A while back I counted the number of bike shops in my neighbourhood - because somebody asked, not because I wanted to - and I came up with 22. Or around there. I figured I'd whip up a map to show it visually. I live in the middle of that forest of placemarks. All the shops featured are under 7 minutes journey by bike from my front door. On the map there are 27 bike shops, and while two of them are supermarkets that have a large selection of bikes and accessories, the rest are working bike shops for repairs and sales. Some are small shops that concentrate on repairs, some are larger with a bigger selection of bikes to buy. I'm quite sure I've missed some - or even am unware of some along some of the streets leading away from the city. And this is just my neighourhood o...

Photo: Niels Ahlmann Olesen for Berlingske.dk / Urban.dk The City of Copenhagen has been on a 'charm offensive' since April 2010. The goal is to get more people to use the bike racks around the city's Metro stations, instead of leaning them up against everything else. Here's the simple trick. If you park your bicycle illegally, the City will move it over to the bike racks. Instead of finger-wagging, they will then oil your chain , pump your tires and leave a little note on your bicycle asking to kindly use the bike racks in the future. How brilliant is that? And the great thing is that the initiative has worked. "It's about getting people to stop parking their bicycles in areas that emergency service vehicles need to access if there is an incident at a Metro station", said Project Leader Poul Erik Kinimond, as his colleague Morten Schelbech oils a chain in the background. Twice a day they move bicycles at the city's largest Metro stations. "We...

For Cyclists As there has recently been a rather tactless criticism directed towards us cyclists, it must be permitted for me to bring some modest, if not harmful, proposals for a new traffic etiquette for cyclists and other wheeled persons. Let us begin at the beginning. You set yourself up on the bicycle, have a good look around – first up and down and then from side to side – wherefter you rest for a moment whilst regarding the road ahead and behind. Do this several times and take your time doing it. Therefter you push down on one pedal and up with the other. The bicycle is then propelled into motion. You can, of course, repeat this process, but experienced cyclists rarely need to. You will now find yourself in the so-called traffic, unless you are riding on the island of Saltholm, but we'll assume you're on a busy street. As soon as you've run over the first person you come across you immediately accelerate and try to dash across the intersection while the yellow light ...

Just me playing around with poster designs. Prototypes for clients often lead to other bits and pieces. Available as a poster here if you like. I'm not fussed either way.

On my trip to Melbourne I arrived on the Monday and was scheduled to give my talk on the Saturday. Felix and I were picked up at the airport, together with another chap who was also speaking at the State of Design Festival . A car designer. Former head of design for BMW. His name is Chris Bangle . Charming and personable with great humour. He gave his talk on the Tuesday at the BMW Edge venue at Federation Square. I was looking forward to hearing about car design - all design is interesting to me - and it was going to be interesting to hear how the automobile industry and its designers are tackling the needs and moods of this new century. According to the State of Design programme's text about Bangle we would hear all about how: "We are becoming more aware of ‘personal mobility’, the choice we make for moving around. However, Bangle perceives the need to consider ‘personal emotional mobility’ if we are to seriously tackle behaviour change and develop more sustainable mobility ...

Gerry from Infodesign in Australia sent us this great - and visionary considering the situation in Australia - example of how Sydney is putting some thought and money into promoting A2Bism as a way to encourage cycling in the city. Cycleways - To get us all home faster. More bikes. Less traffic. Check out the Sydney Cycleways website to see examples of other rather interesting slogans in use for the campaign. All and all it looks like a refreshingly modern and progressive campaign. Far from the traditional bike advocacy stuff you see. A great approach to sell the idea of infrastructure - and bicycle transport in general - to the broader - and sceptical - population.

Now THAT'S a bicycle pannier! Love it. Shot is from Nepal. Thanks to Paul Martin in Brisbane for this shot and all the other ones in this gallery from ABC . Showing the bicycle at work all around the world. I love the bicycle powered fan in the jail in Manila.

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi...