The Life-Sized City Blog

Where cities put their bicycles. Above ground. On street level. Woven into the urban fabric. Well...  not ALL cities. I meet amazing, inspiring people when I travel the world with my work. I see a lot of things. Many of the things are good. Many are, however, strange and frustrating. Especially regarding infrastructure. It boggles my mind every time I - or worse, ride on - bike lanes on the wrong side of parked cars in between the door zone of primarily single-occupant vehicles and moving traffic in North American cities and I thumb my nose at every sharrow I see. That fakest of all fake bicycle infrastructure. That sheep in wolf's clothing. Despite a century of Best Practice in bicycle infrastructure and tried and tested networks occupied by tens of thousands of daily cyclists in cities that "get it", there are still so many mistakes being made elsewhere. I see stuff slapped lazily into place by engineers and planners who don't ride bicycles in their city and w...

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...

So, Lulu - aged 4 ( the world's youngest urbanist ) - says to me, "Daddy, what should I draw?" I said, "How about a cargo bike?" Off she went. Here's her interpretation. How she regards our cargo bike and its role in our daily lives. Love it. Says it all. Here was her first interpretation of a bicycle. Danish design minimalism. Deconstructing a bicycle to its basic ingredients. Well... except for pedals. Here was her first interpretation of herself with her bicycle. And this was her first interpretation of a cargo bike - using our Bullitt as inspiration.

Cartoon from 1892. "The Holy Antonius' Last and Greatest Temptation". The Cycling Girl. Reading a brilliant book from 1947 about the dawn of bicycle culture in Copenhagen and Denmark. Chock full of goodies. Here is an incomplete list of some of the many bicycle clubs active in Copenhagen in and around 1890-1897. There were scores more than these. Loving some of the names. Trækfuglene (Migratory Birds) Dansk Bicycle Club Københavns Cycle Club (Copenhagen's Cycle Club) Østerbros Cycle Club (Østerbro is a neighbourhood) Seniorklubben Ordinary Cycle Clubben Frederiksberg Cycle Club Aftenfrokostforeningen (Evening Lunch Association) The Old Boys Record Klubben Nordiske Afholdsforeningers Bicycle Club (Nordic Temperance Associations Bicycle Club) Københavns Kvadrille Klub (Copenhagen's Quadrille Club) Kvindecycleklubben (The Women's Cycle Club) Who changed their name to: Damecycleklubben (The Ladies Cycle Club) Selskabelig-Cyclist Forening (Socia...

A drawing from 1900. Road rage and motorists taking over the roads got an early start. Very a propos this recent post about the Fighting Traffic book .

"Five o'clock Rush, by John Fischetti" Carlton Reid tweeted about these today. Travel sketches from the John Fischetti Manuscript Collection at Columbia College Chicago from the BibliOdyessy blog . In 1949, Mr Fischetti couldn't help but notice the five o'clock rush of bicycles in Copenhagen. This one is just odd... Loads more sketches from many places over at BibliOdyssey .

What a brilliant - and simple - idea. Playing out. Children playing in the streets. As children did, including yours truly, before the Culture of Fear (and its army of profiteers) clenched its fist around our societies. Playingout.net is the website. This is the film about it. Transforming the streetspace into playspace. "When we limit our children to organised activities and formal playspaces we reduce their opportunities for play. Particuarly the kind of free play that develops really important life skills, their physical well-being and their sense of belonging." Brilliant. WARNING! DISCLAIMER! The faint of heart and safety nannies alike should refrain from watching this. It features not only rational dialogue and sensible parents but also children playing happily in all manner of 'extremely dangerous' situations. I spotted dozens of children inhaling chalk dust, a great deal of 'irresponsibly unprotected' skateboarding, scootering and bicycle ri...

The newspaper MetroXpress had an article today about a group of foreign students studying in Denmark who drew drawings about their impressions of Copenhagen and Denmark. A kind of cartoon response to the Muhammed cartoon saga . Winnon Brunson Jr, above, is an American student at the University of Copenhagen. He explains the idea behind his drawing: "The drawing shows the Danes' effectivness and ability to multi-task. The man on the bicycle isn't just cycling - he's sitting on the toilet and taking a shower with the run-off water from the umbrella at the same time. On the back of the bike is his child who is providing a bit of green energy from a windmill. Danes can manage many different things with very little time and space - that's what the drawing hopes to express. But Copenhagen is also a very environmentally-friendly city where the citizens take part in sustainability. That has really amazed me. The thinking is very progressive and very unique ...