The Life-Sized City Blog

I explore in my most recent TEDx Talk how the paradigm shifted . How our perception of streets changed from being accepted as a human, democratic space for 7000 years to becoming perceived as the sole and exclusive domain of automobiles. What is clear is that people generally have a problem seeing differently. You can present them with reams and reams of statistics and evidence that cars have a destructive influence on our societies and that there are too many in our cities but you still hear the same last-century perceptions about how things can't be changed and how nothing should change. It's mind-boggling how people will deftly dance around stats like 35,000 deaths a year on the roads of America alone - and 6 million injured annually - and still come out blind to the obvious danger that citizens are exposed to. "Dude... I still want to drive my car". In cultures that have not been given the benefit of transport choice (Hi, America!) for a couple of generatio...

First reference to "jaywalking" - Kansas City Star, 30 April 1911. I've posted about the brilliant book " Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" by Peter D. Norton before but I just can't get enough of it. Previous posts are The Anti-Automobile Age and what we can learn from it and Fighting Traffic . The Canadian writer, Chris Turner, wrote today about how there are no jaywalkers on sustainable streets over at Mother Earth Network . Here's some back-up for that brilliant article. The very term "Motor Age" was invented by the automobile industry as a promotional term aimed at turning public opinion away from the massive societal protest at the appearance of cars on city streets. The term "... carried a built-in justification for overturning established custom. It combined rhetorical closure and problem redefinition, just as similar phrases have been used in more recent years to justify workplace smokin...

I'm reading an amazing book at the moment, after a correspondence with a reader.. It's called The Bicycle and the Bush - Man and Machine in Rural Australia . The author is Jim Fitzpatrick Books about the historical role of the bicycle are always a fascinating read for me. Just when you think that everything has been uncovered, nuggets of historical goodness are dug up, cleaned and polished for all the world to see. At first glance, the title seems a bit optimistic. Surely there can't be THAT much to write about on the subject. The Bicycle and the Bush, however, is filled with brilliant stories, anecdotes and historical references. Australia is in no way a shining light for bicycle culture in a modern context but what an astonishing role the bicycle played in building the nation between 1890-1920. It never ceases to amaze me when writers produce a work that requires so much research. In addition to a constant flow of nuggets, the book is richly illustrated. At left...

I've continued reading the excellent Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton . It's a digestive book. I find myself reading a few pages at a time and then putting it down, finding it necessary to reflect. Norton has divided it up into three parts and the first part deals with the way automobiles were regarded in the public eye between 1900 and up through the 1920's. To put it mildly, automobile traffic was not popular. Almost a century on it seems that certain myths persist. That apart from some growing pains at the beginning, cars were always just a given in cities. I've been quite amazed to learn how massive the resistance to them was. Norton writes about the 'street' and the perception of what the street was for. The public at the time regarded the street much in the same way as people had since cities were first formed. It was a space for people. A place to walk, a place to play, a place to alight from a s...

Just got a book in the post today. "Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" by Peter D. Norton. It's looking good already. Under 'The Social Reconstruction of the Street' I can read that: "Until the 1920's, under prevailing conceptions of the street, cars were at best uninvited guests. To many they were unruly intruders. They obstructed and endangered street uses of long-standing legitimacy. As a Providence newspaper editor expressed the problem in 1921, 'it is impossible for all classes of modern traffic to occupy the same right of way at the same time in safety.'" And: "Today we tend to regard streets as motor thoroughfares, and we tend to project this construction back to pre-automotive streets. In retrospect, therefore, the use of streets for children's play (for example) can seem obviously wrong, and thus the departure of children from streets with the arrival of automobiles can seem an obvious and si...

Death on The Streets Another book which is so interesting that it makes my head hurt is by Robert Davis. Death on the Streets: Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety. I've been reading it for ages. A couple of pages is enough for me to put it down and reflect. It's chock full of facts and references, as well as thought-provoking observations about the role of the car in our societies. It discusses how most of the 'road safety improvements' of the past 50 years, from road design to seat belts, have actually resulted in a terrifying increase in danger from cars, which permeates all over lives and the book is also 'a social history of the terrible toll of car surpremacy...' Worldwide, between 15-20 million people have died and hundreds of millions have been permanently injured in road accidents since the beginnings of motorised society early last century. The book's publication in 1993 brought about the formation of the Road Danger Reduction Forum , of which Rob...

I found this brilliant sign over at Will o' the Wisp, a website featuring four Dutch mothers who blog about life in the Netherlands with sharp, entertaining wit. (now defunct, it seems.) They didn't cut any corners when writing about Dutch bicycle culture. Like the sign above says, "Please refrain from reading newspapers while cycling". I often see people riding with books here in Copenhagen and lament daily the fact that I have, as yet, been unable to catch a photo of one. [I'm still waiting for the shot of a cat in a basket, too] Newspapers would be frightfully tricky to control on a bicycle, however. Well, unless you were selling them, of course: . Although the Italians figured out newspaper transport on bicycles decades ago . I do have a photo of Felix reading a book on our Long John - back when we had the Long John - on our way to football training: This is a common sight. Kids in cargo bikes reading books on their way home from school. The ar...

It is with absolute enthusiasm that I can highly recommend the book - Traffic - Why We Drive the Way We Do (and what it says about us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Carlton Reid over at Quickrelease.tv recommended it and I promptly ordered it from Amazon. I'm glad I did. It may not have been the author's intention, but I'm left with the sense that this is the greatest bicycle advocacy book ever written . It's all about cars and how motor vechicles affect those who drive them - or those who walk/ride next to them. Filled with references to countless studies and research, Traffic will make you think differently the next time you hop into a car. It also helps cyclists and pedestrian understand the intricate happenings in the heads of motorists. I've had a driving licence for about 25 years and enjoy driving. I don't do much of it now that I live in Copenhagen but on every single page of the book I found myself muttering an inner 'wow' or 'hmm'. So many peopl...

Much is written about the Danish urban planner and architect Jan Gehl with regards to creating segregated bike infrastructure in cities in order to keep cyclists safe and to increase the number of cyclists in the urban landscape. It's worth mentioning that it's not all about the bike lanes. They are a fantastic symbol of intelligent urban planning, but Gehl's thoughts and experiences with urban planning in general are far-reaching. His consultancy company Gehl Architects continue his important work. I like this excerpt from an interview with Metropolis Magazine : "One of the interesting things about Copenhagen is the gradual approach. "Public Spaces, Public Life" is the first ever recording of the life of a city. Every city counts its traffic one or two times a year, but hardly any city knows about what people do in a city and how the city is being used . "In Copenhagen we've pioneered this as a working method: study what's going on, look at the...