The Life-Sized City Blog

Forty years of working hard to create the World's Cycling Capital and, it seems, we're throwing it all away. All over the world the bicycle is booming. Sales are up in the most unusual places after 'The Summer of the Bicycle', the oil crisis and the global economic meltdown in 2008. Even in Holland, where everyone owns a bike already, many companies are reporting increases in sales. Some of the larger companies are up 15%. If we look at Denmark, the numbers for bicycle sales in 2007 are not reassuring. According to the industry organisation for bike retailers - Danske Cykelhandlere - the numbers are expected to be down 5%. When I spoke with them the man tried to brush off the negative numbers by saying that Denmark has had a few years with high sales increases so a fall wasn't a problem. However, many other countries have experienced increases over the past few years, too, so there goes that theory. When pressed about bike helmets, he quoted word for word th...

Some of you may recall that Copenhagenize/ Copenhagen Cycle Chic were the proud recipients of one of Yahoo!'s Purple Pedal bikes last year. The bikes are equipped with a mobile phone with a camera, which is run off a solar panelled box on the back. It takes a photo every minute when active and instantly transports it back to a Flickr website and the Purple Pedals website, complete with geotag. When the bike is stationary for three minutes, it goes to 'sleep' and will awake once again when it is put into motion. All quite flash. All went well for a good while. I rode it around, for example, when the Portland crew came to Copenhagen on a study trip last fall. Here's a photo series taken by the bike's camera . After that there were some technical difficulties involving... well... technical stuff. I'm pleased to say that the bike is up and running again and, after a week in Copenhagen, the bike is now in Tanzania! My friends at Baisikeli, the development org that ...

I am so totally crap at covering the bicycle infrastructure in provincial Denmark quite simply because I rarely get out there. The opportunity arose a week ago when we motored out to the country in our car share car , to spend some time with all the kids and parents in my son's school class. Just as in Holland and many regions of other European countries, there are bike lanes pretty much everywhere. They vary in style and placement, depending on the amount of traffic they get. If you're really out in the boondocks, you may be stuck for separated lanes, but between most towns there are either lanes on each side of the road or, like in the photo above, a two-lane bike lane running parallel to the road. This bike lane runs between two towns. One with a population of 4000 and the other, 15,000. It is a part of the regional and national bike lane network. Roughly 10,000 kilometres in all. The respective county is responsible for upkeep of the lanes in its area. Such lanes are primar...

Thanks to BlackSeaFleet for the link to this great shot. A hunter cycling home with his quarry. It's from the strange Fail blog , who seem to think this is strange, but it gets a Copenhagenize thumbs up for innovation and balls.

A little spot of winterliciousness from Austria, as photographed by ' Anuwintschalek ' on Flickr. Perhaps her Triobike is parked nearby. With the record cold snap chilling most of Europe , it's nice to see how cyclists across the Continent either just get on with it or find unique ways to adapt. Nice to see he is riding a normal bike and I love the mirrors. You never know who's skating up behind you.

Typical Copenhagen. Someone needs to reserve this stretch of parking spots. For whatever reason, be it the arrival of a moving van or a temporary container. Who knows. They used the traditional tape and orange pylons but this is often hardly a deterrent for motorists. I've tried this before and all too often a motorist will disregard your attempt to reserve the spot. Finding parking is difficult in the centre of Copenhagen. It's frightfully expensive and the City removes 2-3% of all parking street-level parking each year, using the space for bicycle infrastructure or public spaces in general, be it trees, benches, what have you. The solution above is simple. Mark off the space you need to reserve and then use some of those bicycles leaning against a building nearby, laying them down ever so nice. A motorist may nudge a pylon out of the way but they will hardly hop out of their car to move a bicycle. Case closed. Problem solved. Copenhagen style.

All the underground stations on the new Copenhagen Metro have bike parking rooms. I never use them myself but the few times I've peeked inside... ... there is always loads of room. There is a bar on each wall, but bikes are just leanding on their kickstands. The Metro is brilliant but it doesn't go many places outside of cycle range - the red local trains transport you farther out into the suburbs - so there isn't that much use for the parking rooms I suppose. The Metro was voted as the World's Best a couple of years ago and is quite cool. The URL is nice, too. www.m.dk .

Got a call from Larry vs Harry the other day. One of their customers had converted a Bullitt cargo bike into a power station with a wind turbine and solar panels charging a battery. That's something I had to see for myself so I called Ulrik Bing from HumanBattery.dk and met up with him and his colleagues last week. The bicycle and the wind, in Copenhagen anyway, are often at odds with each other. It's a frightfully windy city and it always seems like there is a headwind. The very idea of combining the two is fantastic. Creating a Bullitt with a wind turbine and solar panels is just one of many ideas on the go with Ulrik Bing, Carsten Koch [the construtor] and Claus Nørregaard. With the UN Climate Conference on the horizon in December 2009 they have a thick idea catalogue with ways to bring climate consciousness to the people. Speaking with them and hearing their enthusiasm as they rattle off their many idealist ideas is infectious. The Bullitt cargo bike is a flagship for th...

The famous Tivoli Gardens in the centre of Copenhagen plans to be the world's first amusement park to be powered by wind energy. Tivoli Gardens were opened in 1843 and, with the exception of Bakken north of Copenhagen which opened in the late 1500's, it is the oldest amusement park in the world. It inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland. In collaboration with DONG Energy [Danish Oil & Natural Gas], Tivoli aims to be wind powered by 2010. Next year, in December 2009, the world will descend on Copenhagen for the UN Climate Conference - also called COP 15 . It will be time for the countries of the world to sign a new climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Agreement. There is enormous focus on this climate conference. There will be many environmental projects launched between now and then and we're going to cover what we can here on Copenhagenize. Focus on bicycle culture, of course, with a bit of sustainability thrown in. And hopefullly a load of good things involving ...

Good news this morning. The street here in Copenhagen - Nørrebrogade - that has been closed off to cars for a trial period of three months will now enjoy a permanent status. "Our goal of transforming Nørrebrogade into a better place to be, making it easier to be a cyclist, pedestrian and bus passenger, has succeeded", said Klaus Bondam, the councillor in charge of Traffic and Environment. "Even among those who choose to drive there is a majority for making the initiative permanent", he added. We've covered this exciting development in previous posts. See the link list at the bottom. In summary, Nørrebrogade [North Bridge Street] is a main artery leading into the city. It slices through a neighbourhood where only 30-40% own cars so the traffic isn't local. The street has always had problems flourishing, despite the fact that 75,000 people travel down it each day. It is the busiest bike street in the nation with 35,000 bikes a day. In addition, 65,000...