The Life-Sized City Blog

Hey. You know what? We're on to a good thing. We have an amazing product. We have the most effective tool in our urban toolbox for rebuilding our liveable cities. It's right there in front of us. The humble bicycle is back. After transforming society more quickly and more effectively than any other invention in human history for decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the bicycle is ready to do it all over again. Nevertheless, many cities are struggling to get people to consider the bicycle as transport. As we have known for over a century, infrastructure is the key. Most certainly, too many cities are hopelessly behind in modernising themselves by creating safe cycling infrastructure. This article is about the other issue at hand, namely how to communicate cycling. Not sporty, sweaty, gear-based cycling for sport or recreation but just good old-fashioned urban cycling for the 99%. This product we work with is produced by hundreds of manufacturers - most of them hope...

One thing we've being going on about here at Copenhagenize for six years is the importance of promoting cycling positively to the great untapped well of potential cyclists. The 99%, if you will.   Two years ago, Copenhagenize informed you about a research project that was funded by the national bicycle fund entitled Effective Bicycle Promotion - Development of methodology to determine the effect on messages regarding marketing of bicycle traffic. We had teamed up with Thomas Krag Mobility Advice to investigate how promoting cycling with positive imagery was more beneficial than using images involving fear or perceived fear.  Two years on, the results of the study are in. Have a read. And now, more than ever before, endeavour to sell urban cycling to the 99% with positive messaging. Bicycle Marketing Messages: What Matters.  The report, collated by Sidsel Birk Hjuler and Thomas Krag, reveals some of the most important ingredients for the creation of ...

Unless you've been living in a shoebox (or Prague) for the past three or so years you've probably noticed that cycling levels have been rising in cities all over the world. This is a good thing. Through this blog and through numerous journeys I've done to four continents over the past two years I've seen in great detail how various people in various countries and cultures are working to promote urban cycling. One thing I've noticed by haven't really commented on at length is how cycling promotion is largely divided into two schools. Two genres, if you like. For the purpose of this article I'm not going to get into how far too much bicycle advocacy leans up against environmentalism with its preachy, jehovas witness messages about health and saving the planet and fun . We're here to talk about these two aforementioned genres. They are: Bicycle Commuting. Bicycle Culture. To many they may sound like the same thing, pedalling hand in hand dow...

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...

Last year the City of Aarhus - Denmark's second largest city - launched a comprehensive campaign to encourage more citizens to cycle. The city's post code is 8000 and the campaign is subsequently called " 8000 Advantages to Cycling ". Here's some of the highlights of the campaign. Aarhus lags behind Copenhagen and Odense in the levels of cycle traffic so this campaign is aimed at doing something about it. By and large, from a marketing perspective, the campaign does well to sell urban cycling as positive. There are snippets of fear mongering present in the form of bike helmet promotion, despite the warnings of doing so, but it's impressive in the current Culture of Fear climate in Denmark that the campaign is largely positive. Photo from the campaign. The eternally iconic Cycling Girl so dear to Danish culture. There were also various programmes as a part of the campaign to bring the joy of cycling to children. The city sent people out onto the streets and b...