The Life-Sized City Blog

Steve from Bristol sent us an amusing email stemming from the recent Every Time a Bicycle is Stolen a Fairy Dies post . As he puts it, Every Time You Buy Lycra, a Polar Bear Dies. He explains: "It's worth noting that since 2004, Lycra and coolmax fabrics have been owned by Koch Industries . The brothers who own most of this company don't believe in global warming - and also think if it is true, it could be good for the planet. Ironically, they are one of the top 10 air polluters in the US, according to a report from last year by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute. Here's an article about the brothers from NPR . And here's an article about the brothers and their support of right-wing causes, including the bit about air pollution from The New Yorker . The conclusion is: if you own old Lycra or Coolmax you are untainted. If, however, you bought stuff after 2004 then you fund Sarah Palin and other mad people,...

I hadn't really thought about the concept of greenwashing... bicycles... before. Wifealiciousness showed me a Danish bicycle in a fashion magazine - Eurowoman . One I had never heard of before. The text - short and sweet like most captions in fashion magazines [to be read inbetween sips of café lattes] - read, " A bicycle doesn't pollute and while you pedal you get fit. Danish Eco2bikes bicycles are made of aluminium, which is easy to recycle and the bicycles feature an environmentally-friendly lacquer. " Hmm, thought I. Since when did aluminium become a USP for bicycles?! And is an 'environmentally-friendly' lacquer really that vital in the race to save polar bears? So I googled this brand and found the Eco2bikes website , looking forward to a warm and fuzzy 'Yeah! We're saving the fucking planet!' sensation of idealism. Um... well... looking through the website I couldn't find any Golden Ratio for their design concept. I couldn't see gla...

Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia. Photo: Ezequiel Cabrera/Wikipedia The coming boom in batteries to electric cars and Lazy Bikes (electric-assist bicycles) means a boom in batteries with which to run them. A new race for natural resources has begun. Enter Lithium, the world's lightest metal. For 150 years it's been nickel and lead that have been used in batteries but the advent of lithium technology has allowed for a revolution. Longer battery life, lighter batteries in our laptaps and mobile phones and iPods. Lithium weighs 1/20th of what nickel and lead do. Lithium is also used in anti-depressive medicine, ceramics and nuclear power. With all this talk of electric cars and bicycles, the demand for lithium is on the verge of exploding. Lithium is the new oil. Enter Boliva. This developing country sits on at least half of the world's supply of lithium, most of it in underground salt layers beneath the world's largest salt flats in Salar de Uyuni , in south-west Boliva. Betwee...

Friday night bicycle traffic in Copenhagen. The European Cyclists Federation [ECF], present here in Copenhagen for the conference, sent a letter to all the members of European Parliament's delegation to the Climate Conference. It is short and sweet and to the point. Dear Member of the European Parliament’s Delegation to Copenhagen Summit, Urban traffic is responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions. Transport is part of the problem. Cycling is part of the solution. A tripling of cycling (*) in Europe at the expense of individual motorized trips, would save 49.1 million tons of CO2 or 5% of CO2 transport emissions. [*] See The Charter of Brussels . You can read the letter to the MEPs here, as a pdf . Brilliant. The European Cyclists’ Federation was founded in 1983 by 12 bicycle user associations. It has now 60 member organizations in 37 countries. In another recent newsletter email from the ECF they announced the work of the ECF's Helmet Working Group . The ECF Helmet Working Group i...

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...

This essay by André Gorz, the French philosopher who pioneered ideas of political ecology, was first published in 1973 in Le Sauvage . Much of it is still applicable today and well worth a read. The Social Ideology of the Motorcar by André Gorz The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don't have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated i...

Imagine my surprise at Prague Airport when, while waiting outside to be picked up, I saw a taxi driver in the line of taxis pushing his car forward to the front of the line. Imagine my further surprise when all the taxi drivers in the long line followed suit. How completely bizarre and how completely cool. I wonder if there are similar laws in Czech Republic as in Denmark about having to turn off your engine if you're motionless for for than two minutes. Whatever the case, it was brilliant to see all these men pushing their big, fancy, late model Volkswagons. I was lecturing about Marketing Bicycle Culture in the city of Pardubice yesterday and am currently in Prague. More on the state of the bicycle union in the two cities later.

So there's me, cycling towards the City's Technical & Environmental Administration for a meeting at the Bicycle Office when I spot something strange outside their offices. I realised from a distance that it was a kind of wind turbine. For some reason, some people have issues with the sound that large wind turbines produce. Curiously, they don't seem to mind the sound car traffic generates. But when cars started appearing on the roads of the world, there were many complaints about the noise. I don't have this issue with wind turbines, personally, but as I cycled closer I was listening to hear when I'd be able to hear some sort of whine or swoosh sound. Amazingly, this wind spire, as it's called, was completely silent, even when standing underneath it. It was also a bit of a headturner as I was photographing it. People on both sides of the street stared at it and passersby read the sign. Four students rode past, girls, and one of them announced to her friends ...

It's not like cities and towns around the world lack science or stats regarding the benefits of working towards increasing the number of citizens who ride bicycles. You can't swing a Brompton around by the saddle without hitting a pile of studies and research. Nevertheless, here's one more that we'll tirelessly broadcast across the internet in the vain hope that people will wake up and smell the liveable urban landscape. It's not THAT surprising to read that pollution in cities has nasty effects on public health. Now, however, it turns out that it can knock points off of the IQs of children. 4.5 points to be precise. Researchers have found that the hydrocarbons from traffic can lower a child's IQ by the age of three. The hydrocarbons have much the same effect as lead, stunting mental development. So reports Utne , who link to an article at Science Daily . Here's a thought... considering the fact that the hydrocarbon levels are higher INSIDE cars ... does tha...

There was a brief piece on the news just now about how the City of Copenhagen will launch a plan on Tuesday [17th of March, 2009] that will reveal how we aim to become the world's first carbon neutral capital city by 2025. I'm looking forward to seeing the details. I'll keep you posted.

Got a call from Larry vs Harry the other day. One of their customers had converted a Bullitt cargo bike into a power station with a wind turbine and solar panels charging a battery. That's something I had to see for myself so I called Ulrik Bing from HumanBattery.dk and met up with him and his colleagues last week. The bicycle and the wind, in Copenhagen anyway, are often at odds with each other. It's a frightfully windy city and it always seems like there is a headwind. The very idea of combining the two is fantastic. Creating a Bullitt with a wind turbine and solar panels is just one of many ideas on the go with Ulrik Bing, Carsten Koch [the construtor] and Claus Nørregaard. With the UN Climate Conference on the horizon in December 2009 they have a thick idea catalogue with ways to bring climate consciousness to the people. Speaking with them and hearing their enthusiasm as they rattle off their many idealist ideas is infectious. The Bullitt cargo bike is a flagship for th...

The famous Tivoli Gardens in the centre of Copenhagen plans to be the world's first amusement park to be powered by wind energy. Tivoli Gardens were opened in 1843 and, with the exception of Bakken north of Copenhagen which opened in the late 1500's, it is the oldest amusement park in the world. It inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland. In collaboration with DONG Energy [Danish Oil & Natural Gas], Tivoli aims to be wind powered by 2010. Next year, in December 2009, the world will descend on Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference - also called COP 15 . It will be time for the countries of the world to sign a new climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Agreement. There is enormous focus on this climate conference. There will be many environmental projects launched between now and then and we're going to cover what we can here on Copenhagenize. Focus on bicycle culture, of course, with a bit of sustainability thrown in. And hopefullly a load of good things involving ...

Copenhagen beach with offshore wind turbines in the background. The Danish Prime Minister said something the other day that you won't hear many other statesmen in OECD countries say: Namely that petrol prices need to be raised drastically in order to clear the way for environmentally-friendly technology and to free us from our dependence on oil. He was quoted in the New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman who met with the prime minister on a recent visit to Denmark. "I've observed that people in all other countries, including the USA, are complaining about rising gas prices. The cure isn't lowering prices, but instead we should raise them further in order to break our dependence from oil." "We will propose a new tax reform with an even higher tax on energy and the money raised from this will be used to lower the income tax - so we will strengthen the incentive to work and the incentive to save energy and develop sustainable energy sources" , said Anders Fo...

This post doesn't have a thing to do with bikes but it serves to highlight the everyday commitment to recycling and the environment here in Scandinavia. IKEA of Denmark think differently, as we have seen , and Swedish McDonalds do, too. This McDonalds places the recycling task into the hands of the trained Swedish recycler. When you're done eating you sort your garbage into the appropriate slots. When I first tried it, it took 48 minutes for me to figure it out. But watching the locals do it and you see it is really second nature. Slots for cans, bottles, straws and lids, foot leftovers, drink/ice leftovers, cardboard boxes, cups and the trays. Click on the photo to go to Flickr and see the notes on the photo and to get a better idea of how it works. Another fine detail which we don't even have in Denmark is when you buy a Happy Meal for the rugrats you get fries AND a choice of carrots or apple slices. In Denmark the kid can choose between fries OR carrots or apple slices....

It's not every day you get a legendary environmentalist with a rock star status visiting town, but last week Copenhagenize/Copenhagen Cycle Chic were quite pleased to have hosted David Suzuki, his daughter Sarika and a film crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. [CBC]. David Suzuki, 72, hosts Canada's longest running documentary programme The Nature of Things . He is in Europe filming an hour-long programme on sustainability in Europe and Copenhagen's bike culture will feature prominently. We spent two days cycling around the city, with me leading Suzuki and his daugther, Sarika, on a tour of our bike culture. The goal of the programme, he said, is to highlight how far behind Canada is compared to European countries with regards to sustainability and to encourage Canadians to wake up and smell the renewable energy. Suzuki is a scientist and environmentalist and if you're in Canada, Japan or Australia, you've probably heard of him. When we were down in the tourist...

Not to be outdone in the global race to build artifical islands, The City of Copenhagen has revealed plans to build an island in the shape of a national icon - the bicycle - off the coast of the island of Amager, south of Copenhagen. The Bicycle Island - Cykeløen - as seen from space. In an unveiling ceremony at the City Hall yesterday, Copenhagen and a consortium of environmental investors and architects from Denmark and Sweden launched the most comprehensive environmental project in Scandinavian history. 'Cykeløen', or The Bicycle Island, will create much needed real estate for an expanding population in the Danish capital and will become the first Danish landmark to be visible from space. The so-called COMA region, consisting of Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden is experiencing massive growth and The Bicycle Island will act as a symbol for the wealthy region. It's proximity to the Öresund Fixed Link bridge and tunnel that connects Copenhagen to Southern Sweden is ...

The Mayor in charge of traffic and environment, Klaus Bondam , has a new idea. He has been trying, together with the Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard , to implement road pricing in Copenhagen in order to limit the amount of motorised traffic. The problem is that the national government is of the right-wing variety and they are blocking the plans. Even though the studies from cities that have road pricing are overwhelmingly positive. So he has now proposed something City Hall calls ' Intelligent Traffic Control '. It involves setting up sensors that measure air pollution in Copenhagen and the levels of pollution they report will regulate the traffic heading into the city. If the pollution levels are too high on any particular day, all the traffic lights on the main roads into the city will turn red and stay red longer than normal. The time the traffic lights are green will be reduced by 10 percent. Motorists will be informed by the internet or text messages before they leave for work...