The Life-Sized City Blog

I'll be speaking in Paris today - 21 November 2015 - about bicycle urbanism and lessons to be learned from Copenhagen. Paris has declared that it aims to be the world's best bicycle city in the world by 2020. This is simply not possible with the current sub-standard understanding of Best Practice infrastructure. The current Mayor Anne Hildalgo, has some good ideas, which we've reviewed here, but until the City understands the basics of bicycle infrastructure,  not much is going to happen. While there are good examples of the City employing Best Practice infrastructure (above left) there are still strange things imagined in the heads of engineers and planners who have little idea of how to do it. Like the weird bi-directional stuff you see like above, right. Or using bus lanes as bicycle lanes on long boulevards where buses can get up to speed (above, left), or strange turn lanes like atabove, right. Best Practice has been established. It's ridiculous to t...

Yeah, so, there I was on summer holidays with the kids, standing atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Been there, done that many times before, but it's always a beautiful experience looking out over a beautiful city. If you're afraid of heights, the rule of thumb is "don't look down". When you work with liveable cities, transport and bicycle urbanism... it would seem that this rule applies as well. Don't look down. I did, however. I looked down at the intersection on Quai Branly where it meets Pont d'Iéna over the Seine. This is a place with easily hundreds of thousands of visitors every year and more and more cyclists. It is also clearly a place dominated by The Arrogance of Space of last century traffic engineering. It is a museum for failed, car-centric traffic planning - sad and amusing all at once. You may recall my earlier article about The Arrogance of Space in traffic planning . I talk a lot about it in my keynotes, this Arrogance of Space and I de...

The current mayor of Paris – Bertrand Delanoë – is a living liveable city legend. While at the reins of the city for two terms, he has transformed the French capital in so many positive ways. You have to love a mayor quoted as saying, "The fact is that cars no longer have a place in the big cities of our time". 30 km/h zones, traffic calming and... the Vélib' bike sharing system are all part of his modern legacy. The number of bicycle users in Paris has increased since the launch of Vélib'. Delanoë, however, is stepping down after the next election. Today we're going to have a critical look at what the frontrunner for the mayoral post in the city, Anne Hildago, is proposing if elected. She is already in charge of urban planning since Delanoë was elected to his second term. She knows the ropes, so to speak. In her agenda, Anne Hidalgo has proposed the following: to extend the Vélib' network to the whole metropol...

Photes via:  Michel & Augustin We kick off another great year for cargo bikes with wonderful news from France. The City of Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, is launching a project called 100 Triporteurs - 100 Cargo Bikes - in Boulogne-Billancourt. It's a project that Copenhagenize Design Co. loves and it is perfect inspiration for our Cyclelogistics.eu project. The company Michel & Augustin is known for both its creative marketing and its delicious cookies. They were looking for a new media to communicate through and that can contribute to a positive paradigm shift in urban life. Together with the Danish cargo bike brand, Nihola , they are launching a cargo bike project aimed at changing peoples perceptions about how to get around the city. Thanks to this project, citizens in Boulogne-Billancourt can buy a Nihola cargo bike for €1000, instead of €2600 . They can also be a part of the new community of Citizen Cyclists who want to make some life changes and a...

Copenhagen's Lord Mayor, Frank "Le Corbusier" Jensen continues his fight for a car-centric Copenhagen that would make the 1950s proud. What makes matters worse is that the Robert Moses Fan Club that is the Danish Congestion Commission (Trængselskommission) are also using a time machine to travel back to the congested past at the moment. A colleague told us very recently that they are seriously discussing widening the motorways leading into Copenhagen because of the traffic jams. Can you believe that? With all the available knowledge, with all the moves away from motorways around the world, these clowns are tying us to their back bumpers and dragging us into that previous century that exists in their heads. The subject of 30 km/h zones was brought up at the Congestion Commissions discussions. According to Jens Loft Rasmussen, head of the Danish Cycling Federation (DCF) , the room went kind of quiet. Nobody knew quite what to say. In a flash, the proposal was wip...

Robert Doisneau. Paris. Fear the automobile. You are incapable of defeating it. Fear it.

This is a photo from Hong Kong by the photographer Dian Karlina . It really is the textbook example of a very non -liveable city. A city for machines, not pedestrians and cyclists. It reminded me of these photos taken by Robert Doisneau in Paris in the 1960's. Pedestrians dashing like mad to cross the street as the car traffic roars towards them. Thank goodness Paris is changing for the better. Doisneau once said, “It is not easy to catch a pedestrian, it is like a pigeon. It jumps.” When they're running for their lives it certainly isn't any easier.

I've always loved this shot I took in Paris a few years back. Depending on where you're from, you'll form a conclusion as to what's happening when you look at it. An aggressive motorist/cyclist confrontation, many will assume. I was riding behind this lady on the shared bus lane/bike path when the passenger in the car said something. I was too far away to hear what. The lady hopped over the hump and stopped. I was now approaching and took the photo. I slowed as I passed, in order to hear what was being said. The lady was gesticulating and saying "I don't know! I don't have a car and I'm from the 5th!" Laughter from both parties followed. The "5th" means the 5th arrondissement (district), which is south of the river from where this shot was taken. She was just being asked for directions. It was all very friendly. That's Lulu-Sophia in the cargo bay and while we were waiting for the red light here in Copenhagen last summer the pass...

Saw this yesterday on my way to a meeting at 1508 . Four cops were pulling over cars. Two cops in a squad car and two bicycle cops. Couldn't figure out why, but hey. Nice symbolism. Like this shot from last year. Here's the story about it . And this one outside my son's school. Here's the story about it . And here are some bicycle cops in Paris doing the same thing. The police in Melbourne, however, attend to much more important matters .

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...

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...