The Life-Sized City Blog

ADDENDUM - 09 MAY 2011 The head of Copenhagen's Bicycle Office, Andreas Røhl , sent us a comment about the above article. It's at the end of this article. ------------ On April 16 there was an article in Politiken , a national newspaper, about some visionary new goals for cycling in Copenhagen. The current mayor in charge of the Technical & Environmental Administration (DoT), Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, is quoted as saying the following soundbites: "If you don't dare to be ambitious, you don't get anywhere". The journalist, who apparently suffers from short and medium term memory loss, wrote this: "It is daring. The goal is that 50% of all trips to work or education in the city of Copenhagen will be on bicycles by 2025." He happily quotes the mayor's press release (Ctrl+C - Ctrl+V is, of course, the New Journalism): Aiming High Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard admits that it is a high goal to aim for. "We haven't seen cities that can reach 50%. It'...

It's a pleasure for Copenhagenize to publish an article by one of Denmark's great thinkers regarding bicycle culture. Thomas Krag has a Masters degree in Chemistry but for many years he has been closely involved with Danish and international bicycle culture. He was the head of the Danish Cyclists' Federation [DCF] from 1986-2000 and he now runs his own consultancy Thomas Krag Mobility Advice . Thomas' Cycling, Safety and Health article discusses risk perception and how we (often wrongly) measure risk and goes on to highlight how safe cycling is as well as showing the health benefits of having high numbers of bicycle users/Citizen Cyclists in a city or country. Thomas' work has been a great inspiration to me over the past four years. He has been a bit off the bicycle radar for a time, but his rationality and academic approach is much needed in Denmark and internationally. Thomas Krag has tremendous knowledge and experience in all aspects of bicycle culture and stati...

Tom Vanderbilt over at How We Drive was playing around with Google's Ngram Viewer in his post about pedestrians . As he wrote: "As I’m sure most of you know, Google’s NGram Book Viewer provides an invaluable window, via written texts of the last century or so, onto what the culture was collectively thinking. Not surprisingly, there’s much to be gleaned here from an urban or transportation point of view." Cool idea. So I put a few search phrases through the machine. Above we have "Bicycle" and how many times it was mentioned between 1800 and 2000. A peak in the 1940's, a fall and then a rise again in the 1970's.  I was interested about the English slang "Bike" and found out that it really has had an interesting journey. As well as having a root farther back than I would have guessed. Here's the graph for "Cycling". Again, an interesting journey. It really came into its own as a word in the 1970's. "Velocipede...

The Dutch national bicycle council - Fietsberaad - has published a paper called "Bicycle policies of the European principals: continuous and integral". In it they compare and analyze the bicycle culture and infrastructure in five Dutch cities and five other European cities. Among the latter, Copenhagen. I've included the chapter on Copenhagen here. It's a long post, but worth a read. As is the entire paper. The link to the .pdf is at the bottom of this post. It's interesting and curious to read what foreign eyes see when looking at the bicycle life in Copenhagen. There are some discrepencies in the stats and opinions in the paper and I've included my own comments in red. Most of the paper deals with the CITY of Copenhagen, which is a small city, and not the entire Copenhagen metropolitan area/urban sprawl. It can often be misleading if you've never been here. The text below is an abridged version. Read the pdf for the full text. Off we go: ----- Unlike mos...

This essay by Ivan Illich was first published in 1973, in Le Monde. In the previous guest essay The Social Ideology of the Motorcar by André Gorz , a number of references were made to Illich. This is the essay he was referring to. Thanks to our reader, John, for the link. Read the whole thing but I'm going to just jump right to the last sentence. It's quite brilliant. "Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle." Energy Crisis by Ivan Illich First Chapter of Energy and Equity, first published in Le Monde in early 1973. It has recently become fashionable to insist on an impending energy crisis. This euphemistic term conceals a contradiction and consecrates an illusion. It masks the contradiction implicit in the joint pursuit of equity and industrial growth. It safeguards the illusion that machine power can indefinitely take the place of manpower. To resolve this co...