The Life-Sized City Blog

The current mayor of Paris – Bertrand Delanoë – is a living liveable city legend. While at the reins of the city for two terms, he has transformed the French capital in so many positive ways. You have to love a mayor quoted as saying, "The fact is that cars no longer have a place in the big cities of our time". 30 km/h zones, traffic calming and... the Vélib' bike sharing system are all part of his modern legacy. The number of bicycle users in Paris has increased since the launch of Vélib'. Delanoë, however, is stepping down after the next election. Today we're going to have a critical look at what the frontrunner for the mayoral post in the city, Anne Hildago, is proposing if elected. She is already in charge of urban planning since Delanoë was elected to his second term. She knows the ropes, so to speak. In her agenda, Anne Hidalgo has proposed the following: to extend the Vélib' network to the whole metropol...

In early 2013, Mikael Colville-Andersen developed a design for on-street cargo bike parking that creates space and accessibility for citizens that use cargo bikes on a daily basis.  After this otherwise great prototype for on-street cargo bike parking was removed due to political decisions in Copenhagen, Mikael started thinking about how to design a solution that would improve parking conditions. After almost three years of working with the EU project Cyclelogistics , cargo bikes have become a main focus of Mikael's work. He has two cargo bikes himself and parking is a primary challenge. When you use a cargo bike everyday, you want to have it handy. In many cities, like Copenhagen or Frederiksberg, you find yourself pushing it into the back courtyard because of a lack of secure parking on the street. Cargo bikes are objets de désir for thieves and, unlike regular bicycles, the theft of them is often organised. Most Danish brands are good quality and keep a fair chunk o...

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Eco.ch conference in Basel last Friday. The theme was "Nature & Mobility - Increasing Mobility with Reduced Traffic". I gave a version of my Bicycle Urbanism by Design talk. One of the other speakers was particularly great to listen to. Adam Millard-Ball from the University of Santa Cruz spoke about Peak Traffic and the future of traffic demand. Future patterns of travel demand have enormous implications for energy supply and the environment. How far will we travel in the future, and by what modes? Has travel in the industrialized world ceased to grow – "peak travel"? Are developing countries likely to follow the high-travel, high-emissions path of the United States, or will their travel patterns look more like Europe or Japan? He highlighted how engineers and traffic modellers insist on using the same old same old techniques for predicting future travel demand patterns. Despite the fact that they are hopelessly wr...

Copenhagenize Design Company was pleased to have been invited across the Øresund to the grand opening of the City of Malmö's brand new Bike&Ride parking facility at the central station. On a sunny morning, the ceremonial ribbon - strung between two cargo bikes - was cut. Malmö is Sweden's leading bicycle city - so much so that it features in the Top 20 on The Copenhagenize Index of Bicycle Friendly Cities . It is a premier bicycle city with around 30% of the population using bicycles each day to go to work or education. This brand-new Bike&Ride facility will host more than 1,500 bikes and there are even - be still our hearts - dedicated spaces for cargo bikes. There are loads of details; two air pumps, a bike shop, lockers, numerous screens showing train departure and arrival times, restrooms, a lounge if you have to wait for the train. There is even a single shower for the odd "cyclist" who might fancy a spandex ride. Generally, the facility is geared towar...

Updated 22.09.2017 I often voice my scepticism about the hype surrounding e-bikes in the many interviews I give, but I realised I'd never written an article about it. So here goes. There has been an enormous amount of hype surrounding e-bikes. Rule #1: Whenever there is a thick cloud of hype, there is most often another side to the issue that is being neglected. Which is what I've been exploring. When that thick cloud of hype is generated by profit-based industry, your grain of salt just got bigger. Baseline E-bikes serve a purpose. Absolutely. They are a great niche addition to the existing armada of bicycles that have served citizens for 125 years. They have the potential of increasing the mobility radius of cycling citizens - especially the elderly. All good. Safety and Speed The first point that should be of interest to anyone working in urban mobility, active transportation or whatever they call it where you're from is the safety aspect. The average speed ...

Mikael, on behalf of Copenhagenize Design Co., is a teacher in the Bicycle Urbanism Studio led by urban liveability expert Bianca Hermansen at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS). Since 1959, DIS has given American students the chance to study in Denmark. Our Bicycle Urbanism Studio features American architecture students. Mikael led a portion of the course involving a massive Desire Lines analysis of two intersections at either end of the Dybbøls Bridge in the Vesterbro neighbourhood, where the coming elevated cycle track - " Bicycle Snake – Cykelslangen"  - will be connected. Here's a map of the area in question . Working with the students - Anna Darling, David Mitchell, Jeannette Mundy, Elaine Stokes, Michelle Woods, Michelle Zucker, Ben Zünkeler - was brilliant and inspiring. Here is a  summary  of their studies. You can download here t he full report of the  Dybbølsbro's  Desire Lines analysis .  Meant as a companion docum...

Købmagergade by Kronprinsensgade - looking north Addendum: Below is the above shot from 1907, in a coloured version. Same angle. Lots of life on the street. No-one choking on car exhaust or diving to safety from vehicles. From the FB group Gamle København. My heart leapt a little when I discovered a series of photographs taken by a Copenhagener, Finn Lustrup, back in 1973. This series is of Købmagergade - one of the two main pedestrian streets in the heart of the Danish capital. Finn Lustrup, born in Copenhagen in 1951, has a fantastic archive of photo material from the streets of Copenhagen throughout a long period of time. I asked him some questions about why he ended up with his brilliant archive. "My interest for photography started in 1965, when I recieved a photo album as a confirmation gift. I borrowed cameras until I bought my own in 1972 and my photography really took off. I was there when the #5 tram line was removed and it was then I really started taking p...