The Life-Sized City Blog

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...

This Danish advert promoting everyday cycling is from 1995. It's interesting from a marketing perspective and not a little rare. Usually well-known racing cyclists are enlisted to sell 'gear' and cycling as a sport. This advert features the Danish racing cyclist Jesper Skibby . By the way, he's the only Dane and one of few professional cyclists to have won stages in the Big Three - Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana. In Danish the Vuelta is called Spanien Rundt, or All Around Spain. The advert rhymes in Danish so my translations are often rendered lame but here goes: " It's hard to ride all around Spain [hard to ride the Vuelta is what that means]" " And healthy to ride all year round " Next to Jesper is the text " Jesper Skibby, winner of the 9th stage of the Vuelta a Espana ". I like the way that a racing cyclist and an everyday cyclist - in the form of the iconic Cycling Girl so well known in Danish history -...