The Life-Sized City Blog

Here's the cover graphic of Copenhagenize Consulting's upcoming anthropological project tracking the Desire Lines of all the bicycle users in one Copenhagen intersection over 12 hours one day in April. We blogged about it earlier . Here's a .pdf of a larger version, if you fancy that . Opens in a new window. We filmed the intersection for 12 hours and anthropologist Agnete Suhr crunched the behavioural patterns over two months. Counting bicycle users and cars, tracking desire lines and observing the general behaviour of the bicycle users. While it was a ballet of human-powered movement, it was also a spectacular display of mediocrity. There were only a handful of "rogue cyclists chipping away at society's foundations with their reckless behaviour" out of 16,536 Citizen Cyclists. As we always say, well-designed infrastructure breeds good behaviour. While data maps are great for tracking... data... observing 16,536 bicycle users gives you a whole dif...

I'm heading to Los Angeles this week and I just remembered an article I wrote for the L.A. Times' Bottleneck section. It seems to have disappeared from their online version, but why not just chuck it up here. It's four years old, but hey. If you're following the latest series of articles here on the blog, you can see that The New Copenhagen only vaguely resembles the Copenhagen we thought we knew. Bikes, Copenhagen and Disneyland: what we have in common Los Angeles Times August 08, 2008 A warm hello from me in Copenhagen -– the World's Cycling Capital. The sun is shining here in Copenhagen and the weather begs for a trip to the beach. It's a great city for cycling and on days like this you'll see over 50% of our population riding their bikes to work, school, the supermarket, the cafes and the beach. While thinking about this article for the L.A. Times I found a reference to cycling in Los Angeles the other day: " There is no part of the world wh...

Earlier this year I was working in Rotterdam, a city I had never visited before. You get the impression from Dutch people in the rest of the Netherlands that Rotterdam isn't really Dutch. Generally, the attitude is that Rotterdam isn't very cool. The only way to figure it out is to go there. I was invited to do a spot of Copenhagenizin' at the City of Rotterdam. A brainstorm session about how to promote cycling and perhaps develop a brand for the City's cycling intiatives. A great day with great, positive people. A real pleasure. I was excited to get a Rijkspas - "Kingdom Pass" upon arriving the offices: But soon realised that it was a golden pass to the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands that would get me free beer and cheese and... uh... bouquets of tulips. Just coffee and lunch, but hey. Copenhagenize Consulting was hired by De Verkeersonderneming, a consortium of partners aimed at improving traffic conditions in the city . The partners include the C...

If this isn't the most beautiful magazine cover in the world, I don't know what is. The Most Dangerous Invention in the World. The Car. It's the cover of Profil magazine, out of Austria . I picked it up in Vienna earlier this year. As I understand it, Profil is a business magazine. Leafing through it, it's filled with men in suits saying stuff in German. This article, however, is beautiful for its stunning rationality. It's a bold cover and the accompanying article spells out why the car is, indeed, the most dangerous invention in the world and so destructive to our societies. Unfortunately, my German is rather dodgy but that's what infographics are for! The article features an interview with Vienna's wunderkind Vice-Mayor, Maria Vassilakou . According to this website, her splendidly complicated German titles are: Vice-Mayor and Vice-Governor, Executive City Councillor for Urban Planning, Traffic & Transport, Climate Protection, Energy and ...

So, Lulu - aged 4 ( the world's youngest urbanist ) - says to me, "Daddy, what should I draw?" I said, "How about a cargo bike?" Off she went. Here's her interpretation. How she regards our cargo bike and its role in our daily lives. Love it. Says it all. Here was her first interpretation of a bicycle. Danish design minimalism. Deconstructing a bicycle to its basic ingredients. Well... except for pedals. Here was her first interpretation of herself with her bicycle. And this was her first interpretation of a cargo bike - using our Bullitt as inspiration.

It's been a while since we've written about cycling to IKEA in Copenhagen . I headed out there with the kids yesterday to pick up a few things. Lulu on the Bullitt and Felix on his bike. Lulu clearly drew the long straw, especially considering the rolling terrain you meet once you leave the city. She sang the whole way. Above and below are some photos from the journey. One of the most popular articles on this blog was a few years ago. IKEA did a transport study of their customers and found out, to their surprise, that about 25% of their customers rode bicycles or took public transport. They promptly started a bike borrowing scheme to accommodate their customers who wanted to get their stuff home by bike and trailer. They were surprised, but shouldn't have been. Only 29.1% of Copenhageners own a car so other transport options are a given. You may also recall an earlier trip to IKEA that I documented a few years ago . This is a different route than the one we took...

Copenhagen's famous pedestrian street "Strøget" turns 50 on September 2, 2012. There will be festivities up and down the street in celebration. Here's a post that shows the origins of the idea can be found in 1913. Originally published on 11 August 2009. I dipped into the archives the other day and found an interesting article from 1913 about traffic on the main thoroughfare in Copenhagen - ' Strøget '. In the early 1960's Strøget, the main street running east-west through the city centre, became quite famous. It was closed off to cars and transformed into a pedestrian zone. Strøget 1951 and in 1964. Strøget now. (on a very quiet morning, believe me) There were protests back then. Cries of "we're not Italians! We don't want to walk !" were heard in the city. Shopkeepers feared for their businesses. Fortunately, the idea was implemented by the City of Copenhagen. They had seen some of the great ideas by urban planner Jan Geh...

My " Monumental Motion - a cycling life in the capital of Denmark " photo exhibition - produced together with the Danish Foreign Ministry's Public Diplomacy Office -  continues to travel and will do so for another year or so. It's been brilliant to attend some of the openings - when my schedule permits - and meet inspirational people in cities around the world. All the exhibitions have been great. Like any photographer it's a thrill see your work on display. The world premiere in Ljubjlana, Slovenia last year has to be the best exhibition thus far. The City has a permanent exhibition space along the river and the photos of Copenhagen's cycling life were blown up to an impressive size. The vice-Mayor of the city spoke at the opening, as did the Danish Ambassador and myself. There was also a photo competition for local photographers to take photos of their cycling city and I got to award the prizes for the best photos (bottom left). Ljubljana is a...