The Life-Sized City Blog

Update: 18 Dec 2013 Lulu and I were on the spot when one of her teachers, Heidi, was buying her tree and taking it home. She borrowed one of the many bike trailers at the school to do so. Standing nice and tall in the Copenhagen evening. UPDATE. Typical. Write a blog post and then two bikes with christmas trees roll past your window. So here's an update. Above: Sorte Jernhest cargo bike , complete with tree and kid wearing an elf hat heading home in the evening. Fantastic. This lady rolled past my window pulling her tree on a trailer. Getting close to Jul here in Copenhagen. Christmas tree sellers are occupying squares all around the city. Many people use their bicycles to get the tree home. Here's a collection of the shots we have of people moving their trees home by bike. This lady had just bought a jule tree and the seller was helping her strap it to her bicycle. It took some work and discussion but they finally succeeded. She didn't have far to go, s...

This article first appeared in the Danish newspaper Politiken on 27 November 2012. It was written by a colleague of ours and her co-workers at Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions The Transition of Copenhagen’s Traffic Logic by Anne Katrine Braagaard Harders, Jens Stissing Jensen og Erik Hagelskjær Lauridsen are researchers at the Center for Design, Innovation and Sustainable Transitions, AAU København. The past weeks' heated debate on cyclists’ behavior in Copenhagen reflects intensified tensions between the urban space’s different mobility logics and demonstrates a need for a transition of Copenhagen’s traffic. Cycling is, as an urban mobility form, of a different nature to that of the motorized traffic. A typical picture of the Copenhagen cycling traffic could be young men on their racing bikes, merging in and out between elderly women cycling slowly, dads talking with their kids on the large cargo bikes, and girlfriends chatting and cycling side ...

An American-style shopping centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen - Fields - has now created specific bicycle parking for cargo bikes. With 40,000 cargo bikes in Copenhagen, it really is a no brainer. Architect Lasse Schelde, head of the Bicycle Innovation Lab and environmental NGO Miljøpunkt Amager was responsible for this little pocket of visionaryness. I know that's not a word. Well, maybe it is now. Great to see cargo bikes prioritised, not least because so many people use them. And a sensible solution, too, with railings to lock your bike to. Copenhagenize Consulting is working on similar projects with our Cyclelogistics EU project .

Motorway 16, north of Copenhagen. Cycle tracks on either side. The discussion continues unabated, around the world, about whether the bicycle can perform as a transport mode at distances above 5 km and thus present itself as alternative for motorized vehicles. First, let's consider this quote: ”In the late 19th century, large numbers of women were already using bicycles to get to work, women office workers and shop assistants wending their way each weekday morning from the suburbs to the town. They found the bicycle a convenient form of transport for distances up to, say, ten miles”. Plucked from John Woodeforde's book ”The Story of the Bicycle”, 1970 So the bicycle as an effective performer at longer distances is nothing new. Nevertheless, we're relearning the bicycle story. A published peer-reviewed conference paper (full version here - on google docs ), based on my Masters’ degree thesis in Environmental Engineering (specializing in Urban Planning), incl...