The Life-Sized City Blog

I gave this TEDx talk in Zurich back in October . It was released online today. Bicycle Culture by Design - the abridged version. If anyone is interested, here's my script. Some deviations, but mostly the same as the talk. Hopefully, watching the TEDx talk is better than reading the words, but hey. I'm an optimist. But I want to put the next 15 minutes into perspective and I need your help. I'd like everyone to clap at the same tempo as me. Not loud, just softly. Like this. (clapping) Thank you. For every time we clapped our hands someone, somewhere in the world was injured in a car accident. 96 beats per minute. 50 million people a year are injured in car accidents. 1.2 million are killed by cars. In both the EU and the US 35.000 people are killed every year by cars. Do you know what that is? That's a 9/11 – collapsing World Trade Center towers every single month. And every month for the last 60 years - at least. I can't possibly be alone in thinking t...

On my trip to Melbourne I arrived on the Monday and was scheduled to give my talk on the Saturday. Felix and I were picked up at the airport, together with another chap who was also speaking at the State of Design Festival . A car designer. Former head of design for BMW. His name is Chris Bangle . Charming and personable with great humour. He gave his talk on the Tuesday at the BMW Edge venue at Federation Square. I was looking forward to hearing about car design - all design is interesting to me - and it was going to be interesting to hear how the automobile industry and its designers are tackling the needs and moods of this new century. According to the State of Design programme's text about Bangle we would hear all about how: "We are becoming more aware of ‘personal mobility’, the choice we make for moving around. However, Bangle perceives the need to consider ‘personal emotional mobility’ if we are to seriously tackle behaviour change and develop more sustainable mobility ...

When I travel around with various lectures I tend to open with a crash course in understanding Copenhagen's bicycle culture. I explain how my friends and colleagues get a kick out of the demand for me to travel around the world talking about something as dull and everyday as 'bicycle culture'. I call it Vacuum Cleaner Culture. I have even made a logo to explain this . We all have a vacuum cleaner, we've all learned how to use it and we all use it. But we don't go around thinking about our vaccum in the course of a day. Only when the bag is full do we roll our eyes and sigh. Kind of like when our tire is flat/chain is loose and we chuck our bike into the bike shop. We don't have a 'stable' of vacuum cleaners. We don't buy vacuum cleaning clothes from our LVS or wave at other 'avid' vacuum cleaning 'enthusiasts' on the street. The relationship to our bicycles is the same as to our vacuum cleaners. They're both merely incredib...

When I was invited to speak in New York recently, one of the lectures was about behaviour and the challenges of changing it. I figured I'd slap the lecture onto the blog. Behaviour is a tricky subject and getting groups of people to change their behaviour is never easy. Lately, behaviour is a hot topic in Emerging Bicycle Cultures. Many people who ride bicycles are generating bad press because of the way they're cycling and many other cyclists are getting branded negatively by association. Generally, bad behaviour is a sign that cyclists don't have adequate infrastructure. Increasing cycling's infrastructure and profile is a good way to calm the traffic in more ways than one. We're at an interesting point in the reestablishment of urban cycling as a norm. Bicycles have been a fad, a trend, for almost two years now. There is every indication that we are finally returning to a place where the bicycle is regarded as a respected, accepted and feasible transport f...

I'll be in New York City for a couple of days from tomorrow. Speaking at two venues Monday and Tuesday. You can see where and when over at Copenhagen Cycle Chic right here . Come on down if you can.