The Life-Sized City Blog

I've continued reading the excellent Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton . It's a digestive book. I find myself reading a few pages at a time and then putting it down, finding it necessary to reflect. Norton has divided it up into three parts and the first part deals with the way automobiles were regarded in the public eye between 1900 and up through the 1920's. To put it mildly, automobile traffic was not popular. Almost a century on it seems that certain myths persist. That apart from some growing pains at the beginning, cars were always just a given in cities. I've been quite amazed to learn how massive the resistance to them was. Norton writes about the 'street' and the perception of what the street was for. The public at the time regarded the street much in the same way as people had since cities were first formed. It was a space for people. A place to walk, a place to play, a place to alight from a s...

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi...

Photo: Finn Frandsen/Politiken The police confiscated a number of so-called 'war bikes' last night, on the eve of one of the main demonstrations during the climate conference. They raided The Candy Factory, where the bikes were being prepared for the demonstration and... well... took them away. I blogged about The Bike Bloc a couple of weeks ago and it's a shame that the bikes were taken. The police say that they are illegal bikes and may be used illegally at the demonstration. The police spokesman, when pressed, couldn't answer in any detail what he thought the bikes could or would be used for. Via Politiken [in Danish] - and this article They're Taking Our Bikes !

"Everytime I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells Let's get one thing straight. While we're not banner-waving activists, we think activism is fantastic. We're all for it, especially the activism towards creating bike culture and infrastructure like we have in Copenhagen in other cities in the world. We just feel the need to play devil's advocate regarding the Critical Mass movement. Certainly the style of Critical Mass prevalent in, for example, North American cities. Rides that feature an aggressive, in-your-face tone. There are many positive examples of protest rides that are calm, cool and accepted. Budapest comes to mind. Even the rides in Prague - where they changed the name from Critical Mass to something akin to 'bike ride' in order to remove themselves from the North American versions. Generlally, it's a brilliant concept. Democratic to the core. Celebrations, even. Even if there ar...