The Life-Sized City Blog

So there you are. A capital city in a European country wanting desperately to keep up with the cool kids. Wanting to improve city life, generally, but also focusing intensely on re-creating a bicycle-friendly city. Oslo has grand plans. The news in October 2015 that the city council had voted to make the city centre free of private cars by 2019 - as well as many other plans - was a shot heard round the world and captured imaginations in many other cities. The City of Oslo is gearing up for change, no doubt about it. At Copenhagenize Design Company, we’ve gone so far as to call the city “the next big thing” in bicycle urbanism . There are more people employed to make the city bicycle-friendly in Oslo than in almost any other city on the planet. Sure, they’re divided up in different, confusing departments, but they’re there. A group of vaguely focused landscape architect types in the city’s Bymiljøetaten (Agency of City Environment) and the City’s temporary Sykkelprojsektet - or ...

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...

Location: Bygdøy Allé, Oslo // Photographer: Andreas Beer Wilse // Year: 1943 // Norwegian Folkemuseum Images of cities back when the bicycle was a normal transport form - as it was everywhere for decades.  The good people at the City of Oslo's Sykkelprosjektet (The Bicycle Project) - which is effectively Oslo's bicycle office - understand one of the main challenges facing us when trying to reestablish the bicycle as transport in our cities. The short-term memory of humans. Everywhere I travel with my work I hear the same thing - often from people who should know better. That urban cycling isn't possible "here". The usual myths about climate/topography are mentioned (and promptly busted) but also tales of how they have "never cycled here". Sigh. Luckily, intrepid followers of this blog started to delve into the local photo archives and a great many photos have been harvested and presented in this series from all over the world. Now it...

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 ...

Vis World's Most Northernly Cargo Bikes på et større kort Perhaps because we are snowballing towards winter we are focusing on northern climes at the moment here on the blog. We also have cargo bikes on the brain because of our work on the Cyclelogistics project. Whatever the case, we are obsessed by finding the world's most northernly cargo bike since blogging about the Christiania Bike in Greenland and the world's most northernly bike lane . Above is a map with the three contenders so far. Although based on coordinates, this first cargo bike is in the lead: Reykjavik, Iceland. Longjohn Cargo bike. From Alex Shepard on Flickr . Trondheim, Norway. Larry vs Harry 'Bullitt' cargo bike. While not as far north as Reykjavik, this may be the World's Most Northernly Bike Messenger... Thanks to Larry vs Harry for the photo. Nanortalik, Greenland. Christiania Cargo Bike. UPDATE: We got excited when Jan, in the comments, sent us off to Longjohn....

A friend of mine took this photo back in 2011 in  Nanortalik , Greenland of a citizen on his Christiania cargo bike . It was only a balmy -10 C at the time but getting around the town is easy peasy on human-powered wheels. Greenland is an area we haven't covered much here on this blog. We've noticed that many Danish online bike shops are keen to point out that they send to Greenland. Being a part of the Danish Kingdom , it's no surprise that bicycles play a role in Greenland. Seeing an iconic Christiania Bike 'up there' is just extra cool. So I was wondering. Could this be the world's most northerly cargo bike? The coordinates for Nanotalik are 60°08′31″N - 45°14′36″W. It probably isn't, as Nanotalik (meaning 'Place of the Polar Bears' in Kalaallisut) is on the southern tip of Greenland, which means cargo bikes in Uppsala, Sweden, just north of Stockholm are farther north. Not to mention other Swedish, Icelandic and Norwegian towns. I started ...

A reader wrote an email regarding a discussion he had on a forum about bike registration. The other chap argued that "if bikes want to use the roads then they should pay for it, just like cars have to." I was asked about bike registration in Europe and my reply became so lengthy that I figured I'd post it here. Feel free to contribute with other points of view and stats in the Comments section. This "bikes should pay" argument is not unknown to me but it is, in many ways, a rather weak argument. Regarding bike registration in Europe, there are half a billion citizens in the European Union alone. 100 million of them ride a bicycle on a daily basis according to the European Cyclists' Federation. None of them are inconvenienced by bicycle registration, least of all the Netherlands or Denmark - the two countries with most bike usage. Here's three good counter-arguments from my ragged little bag of opinions: 1. Road Usage and Wear and Tear Firstly, imagine th...

If you're lucky, you, too, can ride around safely after dark thanks to millions of salmon sperm. Recent research has shown that a thin layer of DNA from salmon sperm has such fine optical qualities that it increases the strength and effectiveness of light diodes by holding onto the electrons longer than synthetic materials. It's a chappie named Andrew Steckl, one of the world's leading light diode experts and professor of light learning at Cincinnati University who has figured it all out. Namely that thin layers of our hereditary material was better at blocking electrons than conventional materials like silicium. "DNA contains certain optical, magnetic and structural qualities that make it unique. It makes it possible to improve the effectiveness, the strength of the light and the clarity...", Steckl said in a press release from the university. Okay, via a Danish article from which we shamlessly translated this whole piece... but anyway... The two light diodes on...

So many good ideas, so little time. We were thrilled to hear about a proposed cycle tunnel in the city of Bodø, Norway . The city wishes to become a cycling city on a par with many other European cities. The main hurdle is that Bodø is located in the far north of Norway, at the mercy of North Atlantic and, worse, Arctic winds. Hurdles are, however, meant to be jumped over. This is Scandinavia, design capital of the known universe, so some clever thinkers starting jumping. Bodø has a population of 40,000 wind blown inhabitants and the idea is to build an 8 km long tube from the city centre to the College of Higher Education. Clear plastic plates would be used and openings would provide ventilation. It's all still being decided, as far as we can see, but the idea is great. Read more about it here . It reminds us of an idea for a Danish bridge - Storebæltsbroen - when it was being planned. At that time it was to be the longest bridge of it's kind in the world. Some bright minds pr...