The Life-Sized City Blog

Copenhagen's Lord Mayor, Frank "Le Corbusier" Jensen continues his fight for a car-centric Copenhagen that would make the 1950s proud. What makes matters worse is that the Robert Moses Fan Club that is the Danish Congestion Commission (Trængselskommission) are also using a time machine to travel back to the congested past at the moment. A colleague told us very recently that they are seriously discussing widening the motorways leading into Copenhagen because of the traffic jams. Can you believe that? With all the available knowledge, with all the moves away from motorways around the world, these clowns are tying us to their back bumpers and dragging us into that previous century that exists in their heads. The subject of 30 km/h zones was brought up at the Congestion Commissions discussions. According to Jens Loft Rasmussen, head of the Danish Cycling Federation (DCF) , the room went kind of quiet. Nobody knew quite what to say. In a flash, the proposal was wip...

I cannot be alone in enjoying the irony of this mobile, bike advert in the heart of Dublin, selling car rental.

Googleised Facebook bike in Dublin - courtesy of billyvandenende on Instagram The Social Media Wars are now using bicycles as a battlefield. Bear Bicycles is a small company in Dublin selling Dutch bikes to the Irish market. My friend Philip sent me the above photo of one of their bicycles. He explains: " For a cycling campaign, we have created a 'Facebook' bike - together with local cycling advocacy groups. The goal: to get people out of their cars and on their bikes, by showing how cycling is a social thing and how it positively impacts people's lives. " You can see the Facebook bike on Bear Bicycles... uh... Facebook page , as above. Dublin is home to both Google's and Facebook's European headquarters. Battlefield Internet, if you will. Yesterday, one of Philip's colleagues inadvertently parked the Facebook bike near a metro station close to the Google office. When he got back, the Facebook bike had been Googlised. The metaphor of the ...

Paul Martin in Brisbane sent me an online toy this morning and I've been playing around with it. It's a live map of bike share system use in a variety of cities. I decided to compare the levels of bike share use in 12 cities. Nine of them in Europe, as well as Melbourne, Montreal and Washington, DC. I checked the levels of usage at 08:00 AM in all the European cities (I'm including London and Dublin under that label). The morning rush hour is beginning, people are heading to work. I checked the current weather conditions, too. It's late-autumn in Europe and morning temperatures are getting chillier. So, here we go. At 08:00 in the morning local time on a Friday: PARIS - VÉLIB [8 AM / 10°C / cloudy] 753 bikes in use 4.3% in use / Normal 753 is highest so far today MILAN - BIKEMI [8 AM / 8°C / shallow fog] 110 bikes in use 9% in use / High 1142 is highest so far today LONDON - BORIS BIKES [8 AM / 10°C / light drizzle] 404 bikes in use 9% in use / High 404 is highest so fa...

For Copenhagenize the Velo-City conference in Copenhagen was a whirlwhind of meeting wonderful people/colleagues from all over the planet. 'Networking' is far too dull a word for it and doesn't do it justice. The League of American Bicyclists collaborated with Copenhagenize Consulting on a series of bicycle tours before and during the conference. Bike rides around the city to see the infrastructure highlights in the Danish capital. We, in turn, enlisted the help of Biomega and Baisikeli to provide the bikes. One of the tours was with New York's Dept of Tranport Commissioner Janette Sadikh-Khan and her crew. I was impressed to hear that the New Yorkers all took time out of their annual holiday leave to come to Copenhagen for the conference. What commitment. Another tour with the League and Copenhagenize was a ride to show John Burke, the president of American bike company Trek , around the city, along with some other Americans. Andrew, City Councillor from Dublin and...

Dublin. 1961. The frightening " Two-wheeled Taliban " terrorize the streets of the Irish capital. Like I always say, welcome to Bicycle Culture 2.0. We've been there before. We're there again in many cities. We're going there again in many, many others. Time to get used to it. Will Dublin be at the head of the pack or lagging behind? Hopefully I'll be visiting in June to check it all out.