The Life-Sized City Blog

Just when you thought you'd seen it all in Copenhagen's bicycle culture... a bicycle used by a heron as a perch. This chap feeds the herons in Frederiksberg Gardens. It appears that he has trained them, despite them being wild, to some degree. They got spooked a couple of times and then used hand signals to get one up on the handlebars. He was trying to get one up on his knee, too. Speaking to them in low, calm tones. Fascinating to watch. You'll often see herons around the city. I took this a couple of years ago:

I was thinking about my previous post about why Montreal has changed my perception of Copenhagen . I like my neighbourhood in the city of Frederiksberg, which is a municipality surrounded by Copenhagen municipality on all sides. My kids go to school and kindergarten here and you always seen people you know when you walk or cycle around. It's a bit dull if you think about liveable streets, though, as are many neighbourhoods in Copenhagen. In many ways, the reason is, in part, architectural. A majority of of the blocks of flats in the neighbourhoods surrounding the ancient city centre were slapped up in tact with the industrial revolution. Late 1800's to early 1900's. To accomodate the rush of workers who were moving to the city. Fair enough. But have a look at the map below. View Larger Map At first glance, there is a lot of green. Looks nice. But notice all those squares that surround the green spots. Those are courtyards. Nice courtyards, renovated in most cases with playg...

Copenhagenize is pleased to be involved in the creation and design of a bike event that will take place in conjunction with the Roskilde Festival and Roskilde Municipality on June 26th, 2011. Rock Ur Bike will take place on Sunday, June 26th. Roskilde Festival starts on June 30th but the camping areas open on June 25th and warm up music starts on the Sunday, to entertain the tens of thousands of festival-goers. It is a simple celebration of the bicycle as an integral part of society. As the poster says, "Pimp your bike and ride show-off through the city!". The ride is inspired by the crazy bike goodness at Burning Man festival in the USA. Roskilde Festival, since its inception in 1971 , has become one of Europe's largest music festivals, with 80,000 people taking part, not to mention over 20,000 volunteers. The City of Roskilde is a bit older. A thousand years older, give or take. This year the city has a bicycle campaign to promote cycling called Roskilde ...