The Life-Sized City Blog

Let's just get to it, shall we. Cyclists are not random boxes of corn flakes that you store up on a shelf, out of sight - out of mind. They are urban citizens contributing as much as the next - often more - to urban life. Like pedestrians and public transport users, they are best served at street level as integral threads woven into the rich urban fabric to contribute to the beautiful complexities of city life. Anthropologically, socially, financially. For over a century we have understood the necessity of Best Practice infrastructure . We have tried and tested it with hundreds and hundreds of millions of people - and perfected it. We have measured and gauged it in order to understand it. We have regarded it as a beautiful, functional thing and designed it accordingly. For 7000 years we have lived together in cities, on equal footing. In the splendid democracy of urban space.  The streets were the most democratic spaces in the history of homo sapiens. Super Bicycle Sna...

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...

Elevated cycle track network - Netherlands 1950s. Read more about how London is becoming the Village Idiot of Urban Innovation with other ideas like this one. There's been a bit of chatter of late about a (not very) new idea for bicycle "infrastructure" in London. None other than architect Norman Robert Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, OM Kt, has dusted off a student's idea and launched it upon an unsuspecting world. Rendering of the Sky Cycle Now of course this isn't a good idea. This is classic Magpie Architecture. Attempting to attract people to big shiny things that dazzle but that have little functional value in the development of a city. Then again, Foster is a master of building big shiny things. Ideas like these are city killers. Removing great numbers of citizens who could be cycling down city streets past shops and cafés on their way to work or school and placing them on a shelf, far away from everything else. All this in a city that is ...

There is a constant flow of discussion at the moment about the proposed congestion charges in Copenhagen - one of the initiatives the current government had on their election platform. Like in Stockholm and in London prior to implementation of their congestion charges, the debate is heated and often rather one-sided. Copenhagenize is pleased to feature this guest article written by Natalie Mossin and Jane Sandberg. Jane is the CEO of The Danish Architects' Association and Natalie is the Chairman of the Board. The Danish Architects' Association was founded in 1879 and works to promote the quality of planning and design of our physical environment and to improve and develop the conditions for the architect's profession. We thought it appropriate to publish some rational thoughts about the congestion charges. Here it comes. The City of the Future Requires Space for Life Congestion charges are about what cities will be like in the future and which needs they wi...

This Friday, Sanitov Studios is opening their "Go Bicycle Before It's Too Late" exhibition here in Copenhagen, featuring artwork from a variety of artists and designers who designed posters based on a single theme. I have a poster in the exhibition, too. Sanitov Studio and Sons of Studio are happy to invite you to attend the Sanitov Studios exhibition, “Go Bicycle Before It’s Too Late”. The exhibition will present art and design related to sustainable urban movement. The subject of sustainable living has received much attention over the last couple of years, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the issue is often presented exclusively in quantitative terms, with quotas, percentages and pie charts taking centre stage. Sustainability, however, is an aesthetic issue just as much as a statistical issue. To demonstrate this, Sanitov Studio has invited artists from Copenhagen, Barcelona, Tokyo, Montreal and London to interpret two of the main components of modern living – the urban...

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...

The trademark "Copenhagen Blue" ®/™ bicycle lanes that cross intersections - as above - have arrived in London, it appears. As part of a test phase for the new 'bicycle highways'. Not a particularly elegant paint job, but lovely all the same.

This text was seen on posters circulated in London back in 1908. Quite visionary. Time for history to repeat itself? Time to reclaim our streets, not just for cyclists, but for all citizens? As read in the book Death on the Streets - Cars and the mythology of road safety , as mentioned in the previous post.

As it turns out, I didn't get my christmas wish fulfilled . 30 km/h zone for motor vehicles in Copenhagen. Maybe the package is still in the post, but it isn't looking good here in mid-January. Since wishing for 30 km/h zones - 20 km/h for school zones - there has been a bit of buzz about them. Barcelona is developing more 'Zones 30' based on positive results. A 27% reduction of accidents in one area of the city, for example. Amsterdam has proposed a similar scheme, too and the Dutch Fietsersbond advocates them. The list of cities and towns lowering the speed limits is growing across Europe week by week. In an inspired moment of excellent timing, The British Medical Journal published a paper about the effect of 20 mph traffic zones on road injuries in London. It was written by researchers at... The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine... which is strange, but hey. Effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London, 1986-2006 Results:...

Bicycle policemen. "The Police Cycle Training Doctrine" is a 93 page instruction manual, produced by 'well-meaning officers' in the UK. Basically, 93 pages - in two volumes! - about how to ride a bicycle. Needless to say, the British press are having a field day. The Daily Mail's article is titled: Police officers get 93-page guide ... on how to ride a bike (and it cost thousands of pounds to produce) and The Guardian has its Police beat off criticism about 93-page manual on how to ride a bike article. The Sun is ... well... rather 'Sunnish' by writing, " The bonkers bike book for bobbies " Taxpayers' Alliance campaign director Mark Wallace said: "This is an absurd waste of police time and thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money. "Police officers are perfectly capable of riding a bike. It's no wonder we haven't enough on the beat if they are having to spend time and energy wading through this nonsense." A Home Off...