The Life-Sized City Blog

My son Felix is 11 years old at time of writing.  I have written previously about a little parental thing I have going on with my kids. I've never wanted to influence them unnecessarily regarding such things as our transport habits or recycling garbage or other such things that are part of our daily life. Despite my work in bicycle urbanism, I don't bang on endlessly about how important it is to ride a bicycle in cities and how driving a car in cities is a hopelessly old-fashioned and irresponsible act. Cars simply never enter into the conversation. We don't have one and my kids only spend about five hours a year in a car so there is really no need to discuss them. They are simply not part of our life. Nor do I talk about bicycles. I'm not some bike geek so I don't talk about how great bicycles are, how bicycles can save the polar bears, cure diseases like malaria, blah blah blah. We just ride them. I just make it normal for them. Kids don't want to be per...

I was thinking about designing a family tree. I have a huge family and it's often hard to keep track of all of them. I had a look around the internet and realised that there was little inspiration for designing a family tree, from a graphic design perspective. Shockingly little inspiration. So I thought... what if my family was a metropolitan transit system? What would the metro map look like? It took a while to figure out the details and the design. It's basically an infographic. Family trees are limited to a certain flow and order, which is maybe why there is so little new developments in the design of them. Anyway, here's the result. The Andersen Metropolitan Transportation Map. It goes without saying that bicycles are allowed on all these trains.

If we lived in Toy-penhagen, this is what this rush hour would look like. Citizen Cyclists riding through the city. Man in a suit complete with mobile. Supermum with her kid and her coffee. Flowers decorating a bike. The elderly (with baguettes), a doctor, you name it. Businessman with briefcase. 50% + female ridership. Etc. One-handed riding. Yep... it's all there. All we need is for LEGO to make stilettos and mini-skirts if we really want to make a true representation of Copenhageners on their bicycles, but hey. I have also reproduced one of my favourite bicycle posters in Lego. Based on the 1922 poster from Peugeot. Bicycles on top of the world. Felix and I have also played around with Lego as urban infill, if you fancy a look . If you haven't spotted the Copenhagenize Design Company christmas card on Twitter or our Facebook page , here it is. Have a lovely holiday season and a wonderful new year.

Vintage cargo bike fleet in Ferrara, Italy We love cargo bikes at Copenhagenize, not least for their role in modernising our cities. There are 40,000 of them in Copenhagen, so we see them every day. Copenhagenize Design Co . is also a partner in the three-year Cyclelogistics.eu project aimed at promoting cargo bike use in cities. We've published a book with 725 photos of cargo bikes in Copenhagen and around the world - Cargo Bike Nation . We help organize the Svajerløb - Danish Cargo Bike Championships . It's safe to say that we have cargo bikes on the brain. Whereas in Copenhagen cargo bikes are an integral part of daily and city life, they are still very much an emerging trend in many parts of the world. I've ridden Bullitts in New York and Tokyo, a Bakfiets in Barcelona and a Triobike in Vancouver and Los Angeles. Every time, people are amazed to see these bikes. They've crossed streets to talk to me about it - non-cyclists, as a rule. They are amazing convers...

So this was a nice surprise. I had an early morning meeting in the City Centre and discovered that Vestergade is now a Bicycle Street (cykelgade in Danish). The Dutch call them Fietsstraat, I believe. We have one in a quiet neighbourhood already and they have one in Aarhus, but this is the first decent one in Copenhagen. Basically, as the sign says, there is only slow driving allowed on this street and the cyclists decide the flow and tempo. It is one way for cars but cyclists are free to ride in both directions. The idea is nothing new. Rest assured, there has been a lot of effort to implement these Bicycle Streets for a long while but the Copenhagen police - like with so many other bicycle-related issues - have refused to allow it . Bizarrely, they can veto things they don't understand, without being obliged to say why or refer to any evidence. Now we see that a Bicycle Street is in place, if only for a test period. But it'll work, so I'm counting on it being m...