The Life-Sized City Blog

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Eco.ch conference in Basel last Friday. The theme was "Nature & Mobility - Increasing Mobility with Reduced Traffic". I gave a version of my Bicycle Urbanism by Design talk. One of the other speakers was particularly great to listen to. Adam Millard-Ball from the University of Santa Cruz spoke about Peak Traffic and the future of traffic demand. Future patterns of travel demand have enormous implications for energy supply and the environment. How far will we travel in the future, and by what modes? Has travel in the industrialized world ceased to grow – "peak travel"? Are developing countries likely to follow the high-travel, high-emissions path of the United States, or will their travel patterns look more like Europe or Japan? He highlighted how engineers and traffic modellers insist on using the same old same old techniques for predicting future travel demand patterns. Despite the fact that they are hopelessly wr...

Elevated cycle track network - Netherlands 1950s. Read more about how London is becoming the Village Idiot of Urban Innovation with other ideas like this one. There's been a bit of chatter of late about a (not very) new idea for bicycle "infrastructure" in London. None other than architect Norman Robert Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, OM Kt, has dusted off a student's idea and launched it upon an unsuspecting world. Rendering of the Sky Cycle Now of course this isn't a good idea. This is classic Magpie Architecture. Attempting to attract people to big shiny things that dazzle but that have little functional value in the development of a city. Then again, Foster is a master of building big shiny things. Ideas like these are city killers. Removing great numbers of citizens who could be cycling down city streets past shops and cafés on their way to work or school and placing them on a shelf, far away from everything else. All this in a city that is ...

« We are nourishing a monster of great potential destructiveness.» Colin Buchanan, 1960. Quote referring to the car-oriented planning in a report for the Minister for Transport, UK. It was a privilege to read, over the last few days, a thesis written by Joe Goddard - a friend of Mikael's. The thesis’ full title is “Cycle Paths and City Traffic 1945-1995” and it was a work submitted to the University of Bristol, in order to obtain the Master of Arts degree in the Faculty of Historical Studies. Amazingly, it was written back in 1995. Back then there were hardly any papers about bicycle infrastructure or bicycles at all so Mr Goddard was quite ahead of the modern curve. Dr Joe Goddard is now Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Copenhagen. His most recent book is also fascinating: Being American on the Edge - Penurbia and the Metropolitan Mi...

What a brilliant - and simple - idea. Playing out. Children playing in the streets. As children did, including yours truly, before the Culture of Fear (and its army of profiteers) clenched its fist around our societies. Playingout.net is the website. This is the film about it. Transforming the streetspace into playspace. "When we limit our children to organised activities and formal playspaces we reduce their opportunities for play. Particuarly the kind of free play that develops really important life skills, their physical well-being and their sense of belonging." Brilliant. WARNING! DISCLAIMER! The faint of heart and safety nannies alike should refrain from watching this. It features not only rational dialogue and sensible parents but also children playing happily in all manner of 'extremely dangerous' situations. I spotted dozens of children inhaling chalk dust, a great deal of 'irresponsibly unprotected' skateboarding, scootering and bicycle ri...

Update - March 03, 2013: Brilliant resumé about the history of Stevenage's cycle network and the visionary who planned over at Roads Were Not Built for Cars . I found this in a book at the library a couple of years ago - can't remember the book - about Danish/Dutch style bicycle network in... Stevenage. Yes. Stevenage. Anyway, I believe the book was from the 60's or early 70's. From the photo, it looks promising. I haven't been to Stevenage recently so I was wondering if any of our British readers could tell us tales of promise from this hidden bicycle culture pearl. What's it like in Stevenage these days? Is this intersection still around?

This Friday, Sanitov Studios is opening their "Go Bicycle Before It's Too Late" exhibition here in Copenhagen, featuring artwork from a variety of artists and designers who designed posters based on a single theme. I have a poster in the exhibition, too. Sanitov Studio and Sons of Studio are happy to invite you to attend the Sanitov Studios exhibition, “Go Bicycle Before It’s Too Late”. The exhibition will present art and design related to sustainable urban movement. The subject of sustainable living has received much attention over the last couple of years, and rightly so. Unfortunately, the issue is often presented exclusively in quantitative terms, with quotas, percentages and pie charts taking centre stage. Sustainability, however, is an aesthetic issue just as much as a statistical issue. To demonstrate this, Sanitov Studio has invited artists from Copenhagen, Barcelona, Tokyo, Montreal and London to interpret two of the main components of modern living – the urban...

The Carbon Trust's Bicyclegate continued yesterday and made it into the House of Lords. The transcript of which I include here. Generally, reading the questions and responses, it seems like an awful lot of peers with little experience of cycling pulling all manner of stereotypes and misinformation out of their robes. Fortunately, there are voices of rationality present, not least Lord Berkeley , Lord Davies of Oldham , Lord Greaves , Viscount Bridgeman and Earl Attlee . Baroness Butler-Sloss seems not to worry terribly about pedestrians getting hit by cars, instead choosing to exaggerate the myth about "pedestrians leaping to safety out of the path of bicycles". One Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Roy Kennedy, innit) went onto the BBC later to continue his rant against "lack of suitable suitable attire" on Boris Bikes . There's a bit of Rob Ford about this chap. Sorry... noble, honourble chap. [Thanks to Aedan for this link] Lord Berkeley posed a question ab...

Thanks to an unexpectedly large number of re-tweets and re-posts and not least to Carlton Reid over at BikeBiz it appears that Carbon Trust is having second thoughts about their anti-bicycle stance - which we wrote about yesterday . In this email sent round to employees this afternoon we can see a change of heart/ volte face : "Since Friday’s email from a Health & Safety perspective regarding the use of bicycles for business travel we have been contacted by a number of staff seeking clarification on our overall position on cycling. Due to a number of recent serious accidents related to staff cycling the email was cautionary as we were reviewing our approach. Our overall position on cycling has always been positive and we have always been supportive of taking the low carbon choice when travelling. To encourage staff to cycle we have provided access to cycle safety training, secure cycle storage (in place of car parking spaces), cycle maintenance, access to the Cycle To Work...

London cyclists. Who clearly shouldn't apply for jobs at Carbon Trust. There's something called Carbon Trust in the UK . They describe themselves thus on their website: The Carbon Trust is a not-for-profit company with the mission to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy. We provide specialist support to help business and the public sector cut carbon emissions, save energy and commercialise low carbon technologies. By stimulating low carbon action we contribute to key UK goals of lower carbon emissions, the development of low carbon businesses, increased energy security and associated jobs. Sounds great. Innovative. Progressive. N'est pas? One senses that this is an organisation that would, whether directly or indirectly, support transportation like... oh I don't know... bicycles. An organisation that places weight on science and rationality and common sense. So here's the funny thing. Well... not really Joe Pesci haha funny... just quite sad funny. T...

So the Brits are ditching their bicycle postmen. Royal Mail is calling it "modernisation" and citing "safety" as the reason . Over a century of not only tradition but also role models for urban and rural mobility will soon be lost. It's just mad. Does anyone know which company will be providing the vans to replace the bicycles? Was there lobby work at play? Wouldn't surprise me. With a sigh of disgust I just figured I'd chuck a whole bunch of photos of postmen and women in Copenhagen doing what they've done for over a century. And here's a spot of Cycle Chic on the left and a stamp celebrating Danish postal workers.

The trademark "Copenhagen Blue" ®/™ bicycle lanes that cross intersections - as above - have arrived in London, it appears. As part of a test phase for the new 'bicycle highways'. Not a particularly elegant paint job, but lovely all the same.

This text was seen on posters circulated in London back in 1908. Quite visionary. Time for history to repeat itself? Time to reclaim our streets, not just for cyclists, but for all citizens? As read in the book Death on the Streets - Cars and the mythology of road safety , as mentioned in the previous post.

Death on The Streets Another book which is so interesting that it makes my head hurt is by Robert Davis. Death on the Streets: Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety. I've been reading it for ages. A couple of pages is enough for me to put it down and reflect. It's chock full of facts and references, as well as thought-provoking observations about the role of the car in our societies. It discusses how most of the 'road safety improvements' of the past 50 years, from road design to seat belts, have actually resulted in a terrifying increase in danger from cars, which permeates all over lives and the book is also 'a social history of the terrible toll of car surpremacy...' Worldwide, between 15-20 million people have died and hundreds of millions have been permanently injured in road accidents since the beginnings of motorised society early last century. The book's publication in 1993 brought about the formation of the Road Danger Reduction Forum , of which Rob...

As it turns out, I didn't get my christmas wish fulfilled . 30 km/h zone for motor vehicles in Copenhagen. Maybe the package is still in the post, but it isn't looking good here in mid-January. Since wishing for 30 km/h zones - 20 km/h for school zones - there has been a bit of buzz about them. Barcelona is developing more 'Zones 30' based on positive results. A 27% reduction of accidents in one area of the city, for example. Amsterdam has proposed a similar scheme, too and the Dutch Fietsersbond advocates them. The list of cities and towns lowering the speed limits is growing across Europe week by week. In an inspired moment of excellent timing, The British Medical Journal published a paper about the effect of 20 mph traffic zones on road injuries in London. It was written by researchers at... The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine... which is strange, but hey. Effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London, 1986-2006 Results:...

Bicycle policemen. "The Police Cycle Training Doctrine" is a 93 page instruction manual, produced by 'well-meaning officers' in the UK. Basically, 93 pages - in two volumes! - about how to ride a bicycle. Needless to say, the British press are having a field day. The Daily Mail's article is titled: Police officers get 93-page guide ... on how to ride a bike (and it cost thousands of pounds to produce) and The Guardian has its Police beat off criticism about 93-page manual on how to ride a bike article. The Sun is ... well... rather 'Sunnish' by writing, " The bonkers bike book for bobbies " Taxpayers' Alliance campaign director Mark Wallace said: "This is an absurd waste of police time and thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money. "Police officers are perfectly capable of riding a bike. It's no wonder we haven't enough on the beat if they are having to spend time and energy wading through this nonsense." A Home Off...

Bike and Trains Study Tour, Netherlands from Quickrelease.tv on Vimeo . Carlton Reid at Quickrelease.tv featured this video of some highlights of a visit to the Netherlands by Members of Parliament and Lords of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group. Studying up on bikes and trains. Here's hoping they can influence change in the UK. Via a reader Christopher, who got it via Cyclelicio.us who got it via Quickrelease.tv . In other related "British men with fancy titles" news, here's the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, George Grubb, with a gift from Denmark - The Danish Dream on Wheels - a Christiania Bike. It was presented to him at the Dreams on Wheels Exhibition in Edinburgh a couple of months ago. At the conference in Edinburgh, his official car was outside with the motor running while the Lord Provost was inside talking environmental messages. "The bicycle is C02 neutral and I'll do my best to promote Edinburgh as a sustainable city", he promised. Des...