The Life-Sized City Blog

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi...

Photo: Finn Frandsen/Politiken The police confiscated a number of so-called 'war bikes' last night, on the eve of one of the main demonstrations during the climate conference. They raided The Candy Factory, where the bikes were being prepared for the demonstration and... well... took them away. I blogged about The Bike Bloc a couple of weeks ago and it's a shame that the bikes were taken. The police say that they are illegal bikes and may be used illegally at the demonstration. The police spokesman, when pressed, couldn't answer in any detail what he thought the bikes could or would be used for. Via Politiken [in Danish] - and this article They're Taking Our Bikes !

I'm way behind on so many things. I finally had the chance to edit this little film that I shot in San Francisco in October 2009. By fantastic coincedence, my lecture tour was on the same day as the Halloween Critical Mass bicycle ride. I took part with some friends , riding my Biomega borrowed from the W Hotel . I was meant to borrow a Danish Bullitt cargo bike from Erik Zo , who was kind enough to offer it to me, but not knowing where I'd end up in the course of the evening, or with whom and what not, I decided against it. I didn't want to be the man who got the bike stolen. :-) In lieu of borrowing the bike, Erik gave me a lift from the lecture back to my hotel. The bicyle ride was quite brilliant, I must admit. It was definately more 'in your face' compared to the critical mass I was in in Budapest in September, but it certainly wasn't aggressive at all. The whole Halloween angle, with people dressed up in crazy costumes added to the festival atmosphere. T...

My good friend Cristina was in Madrid for a weekend break last month and she heard a strange sound outside her hotel. Bell ringing. Ding ding. She was quite surprised to look out the window and see a Madrid version of the critical mass rides. It took 20 minutes to pass by. They rode at a nice, casual tempo but there were many of them. Anybody know the number of participants? The pictures speak for themselves. But here's me wondering why these kinds of rides are so popular in large European cities that have yet to re-embrace the bicycle. There is none of that agressive, sub-cultural attitude that one usually associates with the North American versions. There is more of a festival mood. My friend Hynek in Czech Republic [I'll get around to blogging about it, Hynek...:-)] says that in their version, they even changed the name from 'critical mass' to something more festival'y so as not to be associated with the negative vibes from 'over there'. I have been criti...

"Everytime I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells Let's get one thing straight. While we're not banner-waving activists, we think activism is fantastic. We're all for it, especially the activism towards creating bike culture and infrastructure like we have in Copenhagen in other cities in the world. We just feel the need to play devil's advocate regarding the Critical Mass movement. Certainly the style of Critical Mass prevalent in, for example, North American cities. Rides that feature an aggressive, in-your-face tone. There are many positive examples of protest rides that are calm, cool and accepted. Budapest comes to mind. Even the rides in Prague - where they changed the name from Critical Mass to something akin to 'bike ride' in order to remove themselves from the North American versions. Generlally, it's a brilliant concept. Democratic to the core. Celebrations, even. Even if there ar...