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Promoting Cycling Positively - Now with Proof

One thing we've being going on about here at Copenhagenize for six years is the importance of promoting cycling positively to the great untapped well of potential cyclists. The 99%, if you will.   Two years ago, Copenhagenize informed you about a research project that was funded by the national bicycle fund entitled Effective Bicycle Promotion - Development of methodology to determine the effect on messages regarding marketing of bicycle traffic. We had teamed up with Thomas Krag Mobility Advice to investigate how promoting cycling with positive imagery was more beneficial than using images involving fear or perceived fear.  Two years on, the results of the study are in. Have a read. And now, more than ever before, endeavour to sell urban cycling to the 99% with positive messaging. Bicycle Marketing Messages: What Matters.  The report, collated by Sidsel Birk Hjuler and Thomas Krag, reveals some of the most important ingredients for the creation of ...

Rio de Janeiro: "We Never Used to Cycle Here" - Yeah, right

Before the Girl from Ipanema, there was the Bicycle from Copacabana. 1940s. While we are slowly chipping away at the bizarre but nonetheless prevalant misconceptions that bicycles are a new-fangled intruder in cities and all the ridiculous comments like "people won't cycle here... it's too hot/cold/hilly/", they remain a hurdle. Despite over a century of evidence to the contrary. Cycling was a normal transport form in Rio de Janeiro. Someone should tell the president of the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras. She was quoted recently that she "loves traffic jams. They're good for business." Lord knows what she'll do if she sees these photos from the 1940s. Bicycle parking on Copacabana Beach, 1940s. We love the classic Danish Bulldog child's seat . Rio de Janeiro. 1940s. For more photos that , here are some from Los Angeles , Canberra , Queensland , New South Wales , Vancouver , Singapore , Dublin .

Bicycle Freedom in Toronto 1910

Found this photo in a book at the Texada Island Library book sale yesterday. Even in 1910, the bicycle offered a fantastic mobility option for the citizens battling with sub-standard public transport.

Lulu and the Life-Sized City

Some of you may remember the article about The World's Youngest Urbanist - Lulu-Sophia - a couple of years back. Since then, Lulu-Sophia continues to fire off brilliant, simple and rational observations about her life in Copenhagen. Many of them are simple observations. We were riding down the cycle track along a busy street once and then turned off onto a bike path through a park. "Ooh, Daddy! Listen to how quiet it is all of a sudden!" Always simple but poignant. Noticing things on her urban landscape that often go unnoticed. A few months ago, Lulu-Sophia took it to the next level. We were walking and had stopped at a pedestrian crossing, waiting to cross. We were quiet at the moment. Lulu-Sophia's urbanist mind was, however, in full swing. She looked up at me and said, quite simply, "When will my city fit me, Daddy?" Fantastic. And of course, life as a child in a city is spent staring at the asses of grown ups. Garbage cans are as tall a...

Ten Things Copenhagen Cyclists Say

(Note: Kristen Maddox was an intern for Copenhagenize Design Co . and was quickly elevated to the status of Legendary Interns in the company. She is sorely missed here at our offices.) Danny Kaye made for an endearing H.C. Andersen in the 1952 film H.C. Andersen  that tells the story of the legendary Danish author of The Little Mermaid and other fairy tales. One priceless scene: a group of sailors creaking into Copenhagen's port after a long journey, finally coming home up the Kattegat--the little bit of water hugged by Denmark and Sweden. The nostalgia in the scene is epic. Here are some of the lyrics: On this merry night  Let us clink and drink one down To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen   Salty old queen of the sea  Once I sailed away  But I'm home today  Singing Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful  Copenhagen for me As a guest student here for a year to research, I always knew there would be a time when I'd have to return home to Chic...

Richard's Not-so-Scarry Car Culture

I explore in my most recent TEDx Talk how the paradigm shifted . How our perception of streets changed from being accepted as a human, democratic space for 7000 years to becoming perceived as the sole and exclusive domain of automobiles. What is clear is that people generally have a problem seeing differently. You can present them with reams and reams of statistics and evidence that cars have a destructive influence on our societies and that there are too many in our cities but you still hear the same last-century perceptions about how things can't be changed and how nothing should change. It's mind-boggling how people will deftly dance around stats like 35,000 deaths a year on the roads of America alone - and 6 million injured annually - and still come out blind to the obvious danger that citizens are exposed to. "Dude... I still want to drive my car". In cultures that have not been given the benefit of transport choice (Hi, America!) for a couple of generatio...

Update: What if Car Commercials Reflected Reality?

Should car manufacturers be forced to include health warnings on their products? Read about that idea here . Addendum: 19.07.2013. Yesterday, two gentleman from Citroën Denmark knocked on the door. In Danish, a sudden, unannounced visit is called "fransk visit" or French visit, so that was appropriate. They were from the marketing department and they wanted to discuss, of course, the parody commercial that we had whipped together to highlight the fact that car commercials never reflect reality or fact. We weren't suprised to hear from Citroën, but their personal visit was an interesting twist. A good, strategic move in a social media age where sober Cease & Desist letters get blogged in 4 seconds. I invited them in, of course, and we had a pleasant chat on the sofa. They wanted, of course, the parody commercial removed. No surprise. They were sent from headquarters in Paris, who saw the parody on a Turkish blog. They had also sent an email that morning, b...

The Missing Link: Bremerholm and One-Way Streets

Earlier this year, Mary Hudson Embry wrote about the cycle track addition on Gothersgade . Another "missing link" in the Inner City's bicycle network was just completed, this time on Bremerholm: a small one-way street near Christiansborg (the Parliament and other governmental functions building), Holmen Canal, and Magasin de partment store. The road leads towards other focal points in the Inner City such as the famous pedestrian street ca lled St r øget. Now that Knippels Bridge is the most biked street in Copenhagen according to the newest 2012 Bicycle Accounts, the new cycle track will allow bicycle users to continue on a straight path from the bridge into the inner city. Before, one would have to risk going against the grain of  car traffic  or turn either left or right and take a more circuitous route. Other highlights: fresh bump-free pavement, a separate traffic light for bicycles, and two lanes-- one for those going straight or turning left and another to t...

The Choreography of an Urban Intersection

Part 1 - On bicycles & Behaviour “Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets”. The oft-quoted words of Jane Jacobs from her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities ring true even in 2013. Throughout time, there have been key urbanists who are not satisfied with municipal jobs, tucked away from the citizens. These are the urban superheros. The almost mythic figures like Jacobs or William Whyte who intimately know our cities.  A little over a year ago, we blogged about an exciting new project to honour these thinkers’ legacies. We put their methods into action in novel and exciting ways. We study the bicycle users' intricacies on a greater scale than ever before. Enter a simple video camera, an ordinary intersection, and more than 16,000 bicycle users. “The Bicycle Choreography of an Urban Intersection—an anthropological study” was born. Over 200 hours were logged by anthropologist Agnete Suhr as she studied 12 hours of video foota...

The Choreography of an Urban Intersection - Part Three: Copenhagenize Fixes

This is where we believe it all comes together. As the previous two installments in this series have demonstrated, Copenhagenize Design Co. is unveiling a document to help analyse the intracacies at work in urban spaces. In fact, a fascinating intersection out of our very own window. We show that developing alternatives to mainstream traffic planning is possible with basic equipment and hours to devote to studying human movement patterns.  Without further ado, we now present our “Copenhagenize Fixes”. These fixes are quite simple, but we believe, will go a long way in working with traffic behaviours, instead of policing them. The graphic above shows the following improvements to the streetscape. Each desire line is given a different letter as a label. The numbers are the number of bicycle users. Two numbers? The first is a mounted bicycle user and the second, a person walking their bike (example: through an intersection). For bicycle users: -Bicycle path...