The Life-Sized City Blog

You know you live in a a car-centric city when it's not allowed for bicycle users to turn right on red. Despite the fact that it's legal in many European cities in France, Belgium and be tested in many others, like Basel. Despite the fact that it is one of the most obvious things to implement to encourage cycling and keep bicycle users safe. A French friend new to Copenhagen had seen that a few Copenhageners turned right on red - only a small number, of course, as we've figured out - but one day in April he was stopped by Torben. Torben is a civil servant - a policeman - and that day he was out trying to meet the quotas necessary to please his boss. Bicycle users are the low-hanging fruit for such situations. Going after motorists is time-consuming and tiring. Just stand at the usual spots and hand out fines for minor infractions - many of which that don't have a place in the law books in a modern city. So Torben was just doing his job, as dictated by his sup...

It's no longer the city you may think it is, it seems. The Danish Justice Minister, Morten Bødskov , is the latest antagonist to restrict the growth of Copenhagen's bicycle culture. He has proposed that Danish municipalities be allowed to remove bicycles parked incorrectly. It is currently only the police who are authorised to do so. That there are many bicycles parked outside bike racks is certainly a fact and an interesting issue. Look at the cartoon at the top. It's from a legendary Danish satirist, Storm P., who was always keen to highlight the cycling situation, as he was a bicycle user himself. We've translated his pisstake on the anti-cyclist mood in the 1930's previously . The cartoon reads, " Since they're considering to use sidewalks for bicycle parking, it'll be rather difficult to walk on them ." There were many more bicycles in use in Copenhagen in 1938 than there are now. Parking was an issue then, as it is now. It's bas...

And so the nightmare that summarises the Culture of Fear reaches the shores of Denmark. Two political parties announced yesterday that they will push for a bicycle helmet law for under 16s. A proposal was defeated in the Danish Parliament back in 2009 , when rationality was still something politicians possessed, apparently. Danish readers can check out Cykelhjelm.org for a crash course in knowledge . The Radical Left and the Socialist Peoples' Party are behind the proposal. The traffic "safety" spokesman for The Radical Left - Jan Johansen - said to Danish Broadcasting: " We are of the opinion that we must make our children as safe as possible when they are in the traffic ". What the Radical Left and the Socialist Peoples' Party AREN'T doing is making our streets safe. They are NOT proposing to follow in the footsteps of over 80 European cities and creating 30 km/h zones in densely populated areas or proposing traffic calming measures in o...

Last week I attended the National Cycling Conference in Fredericia. To my surprise, I discovered that the town was in Jutland, the Danish mainland. I thought it was on the island of Funen. So I got a geography lesson, too. I was invited by the Road Directorate and the Danish Cyclists Federation to take part in a debate with sociologist Anette Jerup Jørgensen and Mogens Knudsen, police officer and Superintendent in Copenhagen's Police Traffic Unit. Journalist Adam Hannestad from the newspaper Politiken was the moderator. Anette started by discussing some her findings regarding the behavour of cycling citizens. In the blue corner, Mogens was representing the police's tradtionally staunch conservative line that cyclists should just obey every single rule. Period. I have since learned that this is perhaps more Mogens' personal line rather than the entire Danish police. In the red corner, yours truly. I was on the other side of the scales, saying that traffic laws should b...

When I was invited to speak in New York recently, one of the lectures was about behaviour and the challenges of changing it. I figured I'd slap the lecture onto the blog. Behaviour is a tricky subject and getting groups of people to change their behaviour is never easy. Lately, behaviour is a hot topic in Emerging Bicycle Cultures. Many people who ride bicycles are generating bad press because of the way they're cycling and many other cyclists are getting branded negatively by association. Generally, bad behaviour is a sign that cyclists don't have adequate infrastructure. Increasing cycling's infrastructure and profile is a good way to calm the traffic in more ways than one. We're at an interesting point in the reestablishment of urban cycling as a norm. Bicycles have been a fad, a trend, for almost two years now. There is every indication that we are finally returning to a place where the bicycle is regarded as a respected, accepted and feasible transport f...

ADDENDUM: This Desire Line has now been made permanent! What we have here is a Desire Line. I walked around the corner last week and saw it freshly painted on the sidewalk. Right at the intersection between the nation's busiest bike street, Nørrebrogade, and the street along The Lakes. Most cyclists will head straight on here, towards the city centre, but many others ride up onto the sidewalk to get to the next street over. They always have. Now, technically, this "sidewalkin'" is illegal but when you have a few thousand people doing it each day you have two options. You can stand there and issue fines until you're blue in the face or you can do what the City of Copenhagen does: respect the peoples' Desire Line - as decided by subconscious democratic consensus - and turn it into a bike lane. The phrase Desire Line, or Desire Path, was coined by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space, from 1958. It describes the human t...

Good news this morning. The street here in Copenhagen - Nørrebrogade - that has been closed off to cars for a trial period of three months will now enjoy a permanent status. "Our goal of transforming Nørrebrogade into a better place to be, making it easier to be a cyclist, pedestrian and bus passenger, has succeeded", said Klaus Bondam, the councillor in charge of Traffic and Environment. "Even among those who choose to drive there is a majority for making the initiative permanent", he added. We've covered this exciting development in previous posts. See the link list at the bottom. In summary, Nørrebrogade [North Bridge Street] is a main artery leading into the city. It slices through a neighbourhood where only 30-40% own cars so the traffic isn't local. The street has always had problems flourishing, despite the fact that 75,000 people travel down it each day. It is the busiest bike street in the nation with 35,000 bikes a day. In addition, 65,000...