The Life-Sized City Blog

The City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Office is currently testing a new bicycle parking idea at four locations in the city. Bike rack-less bike parking. In the hopes of getting people to, at the very least, stick their bicycles in one place, these bike parking zones have been painted on the ground. In Danish the text reads "Place your bicycle here". It's an unorthodox way to do things, but the City is keen to run some tests to see if it works. Students are monitoring the parking zones and, if they are successful in their function, they'll be implemented in other locations around the city. The all-important bicycle logo for the Bicycle Office - I bike Copenhagen (CPH) - is ever-present. Visual branding is paramount. Here is a later article about a Flex-parking solution on another Copenhagen street . The City of Amsterdam has tried out these parking zones and they were a big sucess. By all accounts it'll work here, too.

My friend Marie and I were inspired to write a letter a couple of years ago to the City of Copenhagen with a long list of good ideas that Copenhagen should consider in order to cater more to cyclists and brand cycling better. As fate would have it, Marie is now working at the City's Bicycle Office and I'm a senior consultant but one of those ideas was inspired by a photo sent to me by David Hembrow in Holland. David writes the A View from the Cycle Path blog - a must read. Anyway, garbage bins for cyclists. I blogged about it a year and a half ago . Raised up and tilted towards the cyclists, offering them a better hit ratio. I recieved this photo from the Bicycle Office the other day. There are right now a handful of prototypes of a tilted garbage bin along some routes aimed at cyclists who have problems aiming. Brilliant stuff although to be honest, I think this prototype design needs some improvements. It could be mistaken for a garbage bin that was bumped by a car and bent....

According to the Danish daily Politiken cyclists can look forward to more money for cycling projects across the nation. The political parties behind the traffic plan earlier this year are ready to push 100 million kroner [$20 million] forward in order to start cycling projects earlier. Projects scheduled for much later can be completed this year. The main reason is to give the building industry a boost and create jobs as well as to be able to purchase materials that are cheaper because of the financial crisis. Basically... bike lanes being built to help the economy in this time of financial instability. The photo, above, is a part of the national cycle route formed in the early 90's. It is standard in the countryside that there are bike lanes between towns. This is is between a town of 7000 people and another of about 10,000. The paths are set away from the road in rural areas, but still run parallel.

On my recent visit to France I noticed the bicycle on many different adverts and brochures. It's no secret that the bicycle has become high profile in advertising over the past year or so, but there were many positive images. Like this advert for Promod , an online fashion shop. Even on the cardboard sleeve that my room key came in at the hotel in Paris there was a happy cycling couple. At Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, an advert for HSBC bank featured Asian urban cyclists. A brochure for the city of La Rochelle. And from elsewhere, these adverts featuring the bicycle: Advert for the clothing company Killah. Tourism brochure for the Swedish province of Skåne [Scania]. Advert for Vodaphone in Prague. Advert for The House of Fraser clothing store in London. All this symbolism is, of course, good. Cementing the bicycle as a normal part of life and not merely reserved for 'enthusiasts'. Are we approaching that all important tipping point in some regions? It seems so. Let...

With all the travelling I've been doing lately comes the fact that I have borrowed a number of different bikes. I often consider taking my Mobiky folding bike with me, but since I invariably meet up with readers or like-minded people, there always seem to be bikes nearby. On my recent visit to New York, Johnathan was amazingly kind enough to let me borrow his Bullitt TNT cargo bike from Larry vs Harry . Johnathan flew to Copenhagen earlier this year just to buy one and ship it home. He provided me with not only the bike but two locks, a pump, a map of the city and a tool kit. Totally brilliant. He cycles in cycling shoes so the only hitch was that I had to adjust to pedalling on clipless pedals in my regular shoes, but that was no big deal. It was amazing how many conversations I struck up with people when I rode around on the bike. I'm on the Manhattan Bridge, stopped to take some photos, and a couple of workers on the railway shouted at me to come over. They wanted to know a...

Placing responsibiliy where it counts. There's something I've been wondering about. I've noticed that the majority of traffic 'safety' campaigns seem to focus on everything except the bull in the china shop - the automobile. It's a global tendency, stemming from the seemingly irreversible prescence of cars and trucks. I find it odd that so few campaigns actually place the focus firmly on the problem: the large, heavy, dangerous machines that rumble about our streets and the people who seem to have difficultly controlling them. The billboard prototype above is a logical illustration of how traffic safety campaigns should be focused. In Frederiksberg , the city in which I live - not surprisingly it is staunchly conservative/right wing - these posters were slapped up recently. It rhymes in Danish, but reads "She checked her text messages, and died in the process." What a stupid girl. Cars are everywhere and they're not going anywhere anytime s...

It's the new bicycle parking terminal outside Union Station in Washington, DC. Opening very soon, if not already. There'll be, if I recall correctly, parking for 150 bicycles, a shop/workshop, changing rooms for the cyclists who go too fast [:-)] and lockers. Outside of opening hours subscribers can gain access with a card. It's a useful and practical addition to the city but it's much, much more than that. Firstly, it's an eye-catching design. A little architectural monument. It sends many more signals than "see, I'm a pretty, modern building!" It sends signals to the city at large that the bicycle isn't really going anywhere. That the people riding bicycles you're seeing around town are here to stay. There may even be more on the way. Get used to it. It's an important visual landmark that with it's permanence is telling the citizens that bicycles are, and deserve to be, an accepted, respected and increasingly established transport for...

Without a doubt there were pleasant surprises awaiting me in New York City. I spent a day riding around the city, trying to see as much as I could on my limited schedule. It was a pleasure cycling around the city. I felt safe the entire time and, compared to other cities I've cycled in like Moscow, New York is not the hell on earth people try to make it out to be. Then again, I don't ride like a moron, trying to break landspeed records. I just ride like most people do in most cities. There are pockets of good bicycle planning, like the painted infrastructure pictured above and below, complete with a bike box. Approaching Times Square from the north, down Broadway, there is a fine bike lane/cycle track separated from the traffic, as well as a slice of street painted with funky circles, quite like sections in Copenhagen . Graphic design meets urban landscape: So, the experience in New York was, by and large, positive. There are still various issues that need to be addressed. Of c...

Fourth installment by sociologist Dave Horton , from Lancaster University, as a guest writer. Dave has written a brilliant assessment of Fear of Cycling in an essay and we're well pleased that he fancies the idea of a collaboration. We'll be presenting Dave's essay in five parts. We might suppose that fear of cycling has become locked into a downward spiral from which it seems almost impossible to break, unless the practice of cycling can be spatially relocated, and performed under ‘new’, ‘safe’ conditions. This section examines recent attempts to create such new, safe cycling spaces. For most of the twentieth century, the great majority of cycling in the UK took place on roads. The dominant, widely shared assumption was that (declining numbers of) cyclists shared space with (increasing numbers of) cars, trucks, buses and taxis. Riding in an environment dominated by potentially lethal motorised modes of mobility was a taken-for-granted, normal part of cyclists’ ordinary exp...

Here's a travel film from Copenhagen in 1937. The first third and the last third are all about our bicycle culture. What's interesting to note is that in the 1960's and 1970's, car culture was killing off cycling in the city and it was first really in the early to mid 70's that we started giving it a heart massage to get it back up to speed. We've never achieved these levels since, though. But we're working on it. Regarding the film, there's a bit of outdated speak that rings quite racist in our modern ears. The speaker mentions also that there is one bicycle for every three citizens. These days there it is 1:1 and then some. After the first couple of minutes there is a section about Copenhagen and Denmark in general and then we return to "a demonstration of bicycle traffic that is unparalled in any of the world's great cities." It starts at about 6 minutes in. Beautiful footage and watch for the sofa being transported on a cargo bike!