The Life-Sized City Blog

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...

Last week I attended the National Cycling Conference in Fredericia. To my surprise, I discovered that the town was in Jutland, the Danish mainland. I thought it was on the island of Funen. So I got a geography lesson, too. I was invited by the Road Directorate and the Danish Cyclists Federation to take part in a debate with sociologist Anette Jerup Jørgensen and Mogens Knudsen, police officer and Superintendent in Copenhagen's Police Traffic Unit. Journalist Adam Hannestad from the newspaper Politiken was the moderator. Anette started by discussing some her findings regarding the behavour of cycling citizens. In the blue corner, Mogens was representing the police's tradtionally staunch conservative line that cyclists should just obey every single rule. Period. I have since learned that this is perhaps more Mogens' personal line rather than the entire Danish police. In the red corner, yours truly. I was on the other side of the scales, saying that traffic laws should b...

The newspaper MetroXpress had an article today about a group of foreign students studying in Denmark who drew drawings about their impressions of Copenhagen and Denmark. A kind of cartoon response to the Muhammed cartoon saga . Winnon Brunson Jr, above, is an American student at the University of Copenhagen. He explains the idea behind his drawing: "The drawing shows the Danes' effectivness and ability to multi-task. The man on the bicycle isn't just cycling - he's sitting on the toilet and taking a shower with the run-off water from the umbrella at the same time. On the back of the bike is his child who is providing a bit of green energy from a windmill. Danes can manage many different things with very little time and space - that's what the drawing hopes to express. But Copenhagen is also a very environmentally-friendly city where the citizens take part in sustainability. That has really amazed me. The thinking is very progressive and very unique ...

When I was in Helsinki to give a talk a couple of months ago I also had a meeting with the City's bicycle planners and urban planners at their offices. They are keen to transform the city into a more bicycle-friendly area. There is a network of bicycle infrastructure but most of it is hopelessly out of date and not designed particularly well. There is a respectable number of cyclists using it, especially now what with the renaissance of the bicycle. But challenges lay ahead. I was interested to hear that the city used to have a fine network of bicycle infrastructure back in the day. My colleagues at the City's bicycle office sent me these two maps, both dating from 1937. The map above shows the bicycle infrastructure marked in red. A lot of it mirroring Copenhagen's cycle tracks, like this stretch in 1955 . Tracks on either side of the street along the main arteries. This map shows a bicycle count done in 1937. It's not clear from looking at the map, but the City's ...

Readers may recall Copenhagenize's call for logical campaigns - why not legislation - for health warning on cars , like the ones we see on cigarette packets. This features in the talk I give in many cities: Four Goals for Promoting Urban Cycling. It always gets a laugh and often gets a mention in the press coverage of the talks. You can then imagine my thrill upon recieving the following photo from our reader Marián, in the Czech Republic. Look at that. What a billboard. Right there on the left, slapped bravely and boldly onto a gridlock photo is the health warning label for the new millenium. It reads, in Czech, "Driving a car harms you and your environment" Brilliant. Okay, it's a Czech Bicycle Industry advert at the Bike Brno 2010 Expo and not a government campaign but hey... this is a brilliant start. And much needed in the Czech Republic. Prague is a black hole on the map regarding urban cycling. Bicycles are returning to the strangest cities these days, but Prag...

After visiting the Dutch Cyclists Union - Fietsersbond - last week for a business meeting we went on a bicycle ride around the city of Utrecht. What a lovely city with some interesting and enlightening infrastructure for bicycles. Like elsewhere in the Netherlands, Utrecht has a Red Light District. It's called the Zandpad (Sand path) and it is located along a picturesque canal. The women work out of long row of canal boats. Photo by Buzzthrill on Flickr . Together with Suzanne, Wim and Theo from the Fietserbond we cycled past. Suzanne explained how the bicycle path along the canal had experienced some problems with the heavy traffic in area. Cars were parking up on the bicycle lane and customers were walking along it like a sidewalk. In typical Dutch fashion, a solution was sought. Fences were put up between the road and parking and the two-way bicycle lane in order to allow unrestricted access for bicycles to ride past. Taking photos is frowned upon, but I took the photo at the to...

Not every day we get to blog about Estonian music, but here's a brilliant music video from August Hunt , featuring bicycles, bicycles and more bicycles. Wonderfully filmed.

Paul Martin in Brisbane sent me an online toy this morning and I've been playing around with it. It's a live map of bike share system use in a variety of cities. I decided to compare the levels of bike share use in 12 cities. Nine of them in Europe, as well as Melbourne, Montreal and Washington, DC. I checked the levels of usage at 08:00 AM in all the European cities (I'm including London and Dublin under that label). The morning rush hour is beginning, people are heading to work. I checked the current weather conditions, too. It's late-autumn in Europe and morning temperatures are getting chillier. So, here we go. At 08:00 in the morning local time on a Friday: PARIS - VÉLIB [8 AM / 10°C / cloudy] 753 bikes in use 4.3% in use / Normal 753 is highest so far today MILAN - BIKEMI [8 AM / 8°C / shallow fog] 110 bikes in use 9% in use / High 1142 is highest so far today LONDON - BORIS BIKES [8 AM / 10°C / light drizzle] 404 bikes in use 9% in use / High 404 is highest so fa...

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...