The Life-Sized City Blog

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 The Bicycle and the Bush, however, is filled with brilliant stories, anecdotes and historical references.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...

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...

This is one of the most important books about cycling I've ever read. Like another important book about cycling - Traffic - Why We Drive the Way We Do (and what it says about us) which I reviewed a while back - Culture of Fear Revisited isn't even about bicycles or cycling. The book, by Frank Furedi , Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, is a blunt, fascinating and alarming book about how The Culture of Fear has overrun our societies. It maps out the evolution of this fear culture, enabling us to see how on earth we ended up where we are today. “What we have is a more promiscuous, pluralistic form of fearing. The very important implication to this is that while my parents feared together, you and I have a more isolated, private experience. We fear on our own.” I have an earlier post about how Denmark risks developing a culture of fear , but reading Furedi's book was an eye-opener. Now I'm crap at book reviews - I read two books a week but I've never b...

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...