The Life-Sized City Blog

This is a translated version of an  interview with Mikael published in the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet on 29 April 2016 by journalist Marius Lien . The photo used in the article is by Christian Belgaux. The Great Road Choice by Marius Lien for Morgenbladet - 29.04-05.05 2016 Oslo - one of Europe’s best bicycle cities? It sounds like a joke. But according to the Danish urban designer, Mikael Colville-Andersen, everything is in place for Oslo becoming the next great bicycle city. “No city in the world is as exciting as Oslo right now” , says Colville-Andersen He should know what he is talking about. As head of the Danish consulting company Copenhagenize Design Co. , he has travelled over the past nine years from one global city to the next to share his knowledge with urban planners and politicians. Recently, he has spent a lot of time in Norway since he got a Norwegian girlfriend, and he tosses around anecdotes and bicycle urbanism experiments from every corner of t...

By and large, we are optimists here at Copenhagenize Design Company. In our extensive travels around the world to our client cities and to give keynotes, we are privileged to see so many cities changing for the better and working to reestablish the bicycle as transport on the urban landscape. We get to work with great cities to help them make it happen. I've ridden bicycles in over 70 cities around the world with my work and while often the infrastruture is sensible, once in a while I am presented with weird stuff. Like the photo, above, taken in Washington, DC by our colleague Ole Kassow of Cycling Without Age . Initially, our team of planners and urban designers here at our Copenhagen office had a good laugh but then it sinks in. This is actually a thing. Someone was tasked with putting in bicycle infrastructure and THIS is what a city ended up with. Center-running lanes. Here's the rub. Best Practice in bicycle infrastructure is basically a century old. Dedicated bike pat...

When you come from Copenhagen, cycling in Amsterdam is like coming home. To a different kind of home, sure, but still home. An eclectic home filled with books piled up in no particular order, funky art on the walls, maybe dirty dishes in the sink but cool music on the stereo. Different from your home with clean lines, white floors and carefully placed furniture and minimalistic art on the walls. I love cycling in Amsterdam. It's a wonderfully human experience. You meet the eyes of strangers all day long because of the layout of the city and the constantly changing infrastructure. I've often said that Amsterdam cyclists resemble swarming bees whereas in Copenhagen they are more like marching ants. This difference is largely due to the layout of the cities. In Amsterdam the streets are curvy and confusing and you perform many left and right turns in the course of a day. In Copenhagen, there are primarily long, straight stretches. Most of Copenhagen outside the medieval c...

This is what we like to see when we check our inbox after a summer holiday. A colleague at the Norwegian Road Directorate attached this poster from the city of Trondheim in an email. Beautiful. It advertises the opening of a new bicycle/pedestrian bridge in the city that links two neighbourhoods - Lade and Dalen. The text reads: "Old Love Never Rusts" "They met at the Student Club. He had brylcreem in his hair and danced swing like a god. She looked a little like Grace Kelly. But she was from Lade and he was from Dalen. Then they met again, in the middle of the bridge." "We have reunited Lade and Dalen." "We're building a safer and more secure bicycle city" Two neighourhoods separated by railway lines and roads are now reunited, thanks to a new bridge - Dalenbrua. Mobility is improved. More convenient and safer for bicycle users and pedestrians. Not a dry eye in the house. Well done, Trondheim. The link was financed ...

Here's a brief reportage from a short R&R trip I made to Sweden earlier this week. The details of which you can read over at Cycle Chic - great getaway hotel if you're in Copenhagen or Sweden or are cycling touring in the Skåne area. I took the Øresunds train from Copenhagen Central to Bromölla and from there it was a 7 km ride to the design hotel on the coast. I've written previously about even small towns in Sweden have excellent cycle tracks and even keep them cleared of snow in the winter . I've also briefly covered infrastructure between small towns in Denmark as well as the infrastructure connecting cities all over the land . While Denmark features over 10,000 km of national bicycle infrastructure connecting much of the nation , it is worth highlighting that Southern Sweden does just fine as well. The trains all have roomy bicycle compartments and I always get a kick out of the seatbelts for bicycles that are provided. My Crescent bicycle from 19...