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...

We have a tendency to give cities human character traits when we describe them. It's a friendly city. A dynamic city. A boring city. Perhaps then a city can be arrogant. Arrogant, for example, with it's distribution of space. I've been working a lot in North America the past year and I've become quite obsessed with the obscenely unbalanced distribution of space. I see this arrogance everywhere I go. I see the insanely wide car lanes and the vehicles sailing back and forth in them like inebriated hippopotami. I was just in Calgary for five days and from my balcony at the hotel I watched the traffic below on 12th Ave. A one-way street that was never really busy at all. From above, the arrogance of space was very apparent. Even more so than in a car driving down the lanes. The photo, above, is the car lines divided up with their actual width. Watching for five days - okay, not 24/7 ... I have a life after all - I didn't really see  any vehicles that filled out t...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Cyclists’ protests can be a good thing arising out of a bad thing. Confused? by Pedro Madruga The Good The number of actions protesting for more cyclist and pedestrian rights is becoming more common, large-scaled and with increased outcomes.  Most of us are aware of the protests in Denmark and Netherlands during the 70’s, aiming mostly for increased safety. If you're not aware of that then here’s a whole article waiting for you here . Back then, a message was sent to politicians: the ink was made of cyclists and pedestrians and the paper was the city hall square – as you can see in the below picture (Copenhagen). It figuratively said: “enough”. And it worked. Without violence, just pure human kinetics. Throughout history there were several protests were cyclists and pedestrians claimed for better rights. Just last year, a massive protest gathered 10 thousand cyclists in the UK and 50 thousand in Italy .  And the list goes on, whet...

Two days in a row we get to add new installments to Copenhagenize's The Car Industry Strikes Back series , showing how the bicycle is increasingly regarded as a threat to the market share. General Motors sailed into The Perfect Twitter Storm yesterday and today.... There is a car share company in the States called Zipcar . Car sharing is good. I use a car share programme here in Copenhagen - okay... only about 3 times a year, but hey. It's there when I need it. Once again, it's interesting to note and track the rising resistance of the car industry and related auto-centric industries to the rise of the bicycle in our cities. It comes as a bit of a surprise that Zipcar would go after bicycle culture in a campaign, but here they are, doing it. Zipcar is, of course, on Twitter , if anyone is interested. It was Jym Dyer on Twitter who pointed us in the direction of Zipcar's "Sometimes you just need a Zipcar" campaign, pictured above in situ, from his phot...

After the last post about the culture of fear crap we have to put up with here in Copenhagen it was a pleasure to recieve a link to these posters from Tacoma, Washington and thanks to Nicholas for the heads up. This campaign is an instant collectors item simply because it's so rare. Seriously. The number of safety/awareness/behavourial campaigns out there that speak to motorists like this is extremely low. And we're talking on a global scale. So it is refreshing and hopeful to see something like this. With that said, I must admit that I favour a more direct messaging that spells it out in no uncertain terms that cars are dangerous and the cause of most of our urban problems. This Tacoma campaign is positive and its use of humour is commendable but it isn't really geared at getting people to change transport modes. By grabbing the bull by the cajones and yanking hard we will be able to affect behaviour more effectively and, in the process, speed the transformation to more l...

Photo: Bax Lindhardt for BT This is Helle Kühl. In May 2009 she was knocked off her bike by a car near Copenhagen's Central Station. The car was a rental driven by an American woman who was insured by American Express . According to the Danish newspaper BT , the police have said that the American woman wasn't used to watching for cyclists and, after the accident, couldn't understand that it was her fault. Helle Kühl was heading straight on through an intersection. A right-turning bus had stopped for her but the American woman, who was turning left across the intersection, didn't. American Express, through a collection agency, has been hassling Helle Kühl for $3106.41 - about 16,000 Danish kroner - for the damages to the car. Helle Kühl said to BT newspaper: " This is completely insane. I'm an innocent victim and now they want me to pay 16,000 kroner because I got run over. This is an Americanization of the situation ". There were many witnesses to the acci...

I'm way behind on so many things. I finally had the chance to edit this little film that I shot in San Francisco in October 2009. By fantastic coincedence, my lecture tour was on the same day as the Halloween Critical Mass bicycle ride. I took part with some friends , riding my Biomega borrowed from the W Hotel . I was meant to borrow a Danish Bullitt cargo bike from Erik Zo , who was kind enough to offer it to me, but not knowing where I'd end up in the course of the evening, or with whom and what not, I decided against it. I didn't want to be the man who got the bike stolen. :-) In lieu of borrowing the bike, Erik gave me a lift from the lecture back to my hotel. The bicyle ride was quite brilliant, I must admit. It was definately more 'in your face' compared to the critical mass I was in in Budapest in September, but it certainly wasn't aggressive at all. The whole Halloween angle, with people dressed up in crazy costumes added to the festival atmosphere. T...

A reader mentioned pedestrian flags in Berkeley, California in a comment and added "I'm serious!" so I thought I'd check out this fantastic example of victim blaming in Bubble Wrap Society. He was serious. Is that scary or funny or both? Not sure. Flags are placed near intersections and the idea is that pedestrians pick one up and hold it when they wish to foolishly exercise their human right to safe urban mobility . Most of the flags have been stolen and few use them apparently. Ironically, 48 hours after these went into [non]use, a pedestrian was hit by a car. Here's what Berkeley City Councilwoman Polly Armstrong said about it at the time: "We hope over time - when drivers are paying a little more attention than that driver was - that the flags would be helpful." She added that, "Pedestrians have to be on guard and aggressive with their flags." "After hitting the pedestrian, the driver swerved into the oncoming lane and collided with ...

I've not seen such cool bike parking in ages. At my hotel in San Francisco - the W Hotel - they have three Danish Biomega bicycles for guests to use free. Okay, three isn't much, but it's what they do with them that counts. It's like a museum the way they hang them up on the wall like that. You ask the valet for a bicycle and he walks over with a crank and proceeds to lower - slowly and cerimoniously - the bicycle to the ground. Now THAT is style over speed! I rode the bicycle during the Halloween Critical Mass and the next day, too, with some friends. A one-speed on the hills of San Francisco. Easy peasy. Here's what other bikes I've been riding whilst travelling .