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...

The Bicycle as a symbol of progress, of renewal, of promising times ahead. This is not a new concept. Indeed it has been around since the invention of the bicycle. Many bicycle posters at end of the 19th century featured promising themes like liberation, progress, freedom. Here's an example: In this beautiful poster, there is a lot of metaphorical gameplay. The young woman is riding a bicycle to the future. Dressed in white and seemingly casting fresh flowers as though leaving a trail for us to follow. The old woman is looking backwards to the past as she sits in a bed of thorns, almost resigned to the fact that the future - the bicycle - is passing her by. When people in most cultures see art or photgraphy, our brain sees movement from left to right and interprets the piece based on that. The German historian and psychologist Rudolf Arnheim who wrote, among other books, " Art and visual perception – A psychology of the creative eye " noticed that the way many cult...

It's all so simple if we want it to be. For almost a century we have been asking the same question in our cities. "How many cars can we move down a street?" It's time to change the question. If you ask "How many PEOPLE can we move down a street?", the answer becomes much more modern and visionary. And simple. Oh, and cheaper. Let alone the fact that the model at the top can move 10 times more people down a street than the model at the bottom. When I travel with my Bicycle Urbanism by Design keynote , I often step on the toes of traffic engineers all around the world. Not all of them, however. I am always approached by engineers who are grateful that someone is questioning the unchanged nature of traffic engineering and the unmerited emphasis placed on it. I find it brilliant that individual traffic engineers in six different nations have all said the same thing to me: "We're problem solvers. But we're only ever asked to solve the sam...

If we lived in Toy-penhagen, this is what this rush hour would look like. Citizen Cyclists riding through the city. Man in a suit complete with mobile. Supermum with her kid and her coffee. Flowers decorating a bike. The elderly (with baguettes), a doctor, you name it. Businessman with briefcase. 50% + female ridership. Etc. One-handed riding. Yep... it's all there. All we need is for LEGO to make stilettos and mini-skirts if we really want to make a true representation of Copenhageners on their bicycles, but hey. I have also reproduced one of my favourite bicycle posters in Lego. Based on the 1922 poster from Peugeot. Bicycles on top of the world. Felix and I have also played around with Lego as urban infill, if you fancy a look . If you haven't spotted the Copenhagenize Design Company christmas card on Twitter or our Facebook page , here it is. Have a lovely holiday season and a wonderful new year.