The Life-Sized City Blog

Location: Bygdøy Allé, Oslo // Photographer: Andreas Beer Wilse // Year: 1943 // Norwegian Folkemuseum Images of cities back when the bicycle was a normal transport form - as it was everywhere for decades.  The good people at the City of Oslo's Sykkelprosjektet (The Bicycle Project) - which is effectively Oslo's bicycle office - understand one of the main challenges facing us when trying to reestablish the bicycle as transport in our cities. The short-term memory of humans. Everywhere I travel with my work I hear the same thing - often from people who should know better. That urban cycling isn't possible "here". The usual myths about climate/topography are mentioned (and promptly busted) but also tales of how they have "never cycled here". Sigh. Luckily, intrepid followers of this blog started to delve into the local photo archives and a great many photos have been harvested and presented in this series from all over the world. Now it...

Update: 26 November 2013: New photos of Ubatuba bicycle parking added! Scroll down. Denir, from the Books & Bicycles blog in Brazil sent us these shots from his holiday to the Brazilian town of Ubatuba . It's a surfing mecca and is even nicknamed 'Capital do Surf' so signage in the town is often surf-related. Which also applies to the 'ciclofaixa' or bicycle lanes in the incredibly bicycle-friendly city. Painted lanes, sure, by they are nice and wide - see the red/yellow markings at bottom right in the first shot. Having realised I'd stumbled upon a potential holiday paradise, I did a spot of googling. The name Ubatuba alone just sounds like a surfer paradise and could be worked into 50 different Beach Boy songs. I found this article, in Portugese , about the city wherein it says that 80% of the students of this school ride bicycles to school each day. Impressive. And staying at a little pousada like this one is about €70 a night - about the sa...