The Life-Sized City Blog

Another chapter in our ongoing series about The  Arrogance of Space . This photo was taken by a friend flying to Cape Town. We are not familiar with the specifics of the location - probably near the airport - but that doesn't stop us from slapping our Arrogance of Space filter onto the photo. It's a badass intersection - the kind that makes old school traffic engineers feel all warm and fuzzy. It's a monster of extreme arrogance. Let's face it... if you have space for vendors to stroll down the car lanes (top centre), your lanes are arrogantly wide. Firstly, here is how the space is allocated. An ocean of car-centric red. Thin pedestrian crossings with fading paint. No bicycle infrastructure is present. Take away the photo and it looks like this. Making the red all the more shocking. There were a few pedestrians and vendors present when the photo was taken. A couple of mini-vans transporting people, but generally - like most places - just individuals in one c...

We felt it was time for another look at the Arrogance of Space , this time applying our filter to an intersection in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Our friend and colleague Dora Moreira took this photo for us last week - Dec 2015 - of the intersection of Praça Julio Mesquita - Avenues São João & Rua Vitória. It was 16:40 on a Saturday. Looks nice and quiet with not a lot of traffic of any sort. We are, however, looking at the space allocated to various transport forms. When you apply the colours to the photo, you start to see The Arrogance of Space emerge. This photo is a little deceptive because it is not completely aerial. The yellow of the buildings dominates, so let's focus on the streetspace. Despite being in the heart of Sao Paulo, pedestrians are not afforded very much space. The angry red of the roads emerges as the clear winner in the space sweepstakes. A token strip of purple denotes some sort of bike lane - far from anything we recognise as Best Practice. Not to menti...

Everybody sees their city differently. What does the city look like through the eyes of The World's Youngest Urbanist? Lulu-Sophia keeps delivering a solid flow of pure observations about city life. She also grows up in a home filled with cameras and has free access to all of them. What about putting those two things together, I thought. Some Canon camera, be it 5 or 7D is usually lying in the window sill at our place. I often find photos on the memory card that Lulu-Sophia had taken of people out on the street in front of our flat. She just started picking up the camera and shooting. A couple of years ago I started handed her the camera when we're riding around on the Bullitt cargo bike . I never say what she should take photos of. I just say "take photos if you want". Totally up to her and no big deal if she doesn't. Sometimes I don't notice what she does but when I load the photos onto the computer, I get to see what she sees. And it is quite wonder...

I have always been fascinated by how the bicycle has muscled its way into various languages. There are numerous bicycle references in Danish that are used by reflex, without any direct reference to a bicycle anecdote. I started wondering if this is the case in other languages and have scribbled notes down based on conversations with colleagues and friends. According to Danish historian Finn Wodschow, there are more references to the bicycle in Danish literature, music and film than in any other country. Not surprisingly, there are a few bicycle-related expressions that have embedded themselves even deeper in the linguistic culture. If you know of any others, in other languages, feel free to add them in the comments. DANISH Kæden er hoppede af "The chain fell off" is used when something goes wrong. Example: "Sorry I'm late, but the chain fell off for me today". You can also claim that the chain fell off for someone else, if they are having a bad day...

Thanks to reader Felix Feldhofer for the photo and the heads up about this story. By and large, history is repeating itself as we work towards making cities better. We are returning to many of the ideas that made cities human - before the automobile appeared. It's often a very good thing. Which makes what is happening in Cologne, Germany, even more comical, bizarre and stupid. It is absolutely shocking. A stunning example of Ignoring the Bull . We've written before about The Anti-Automobile Age in the early years of the 20th Century. In this article, you can read about the "jaywalking" concept , basically invented by the automobile industry to keep the streets clear for their cars and get the irritating, squishy obstacles out of the way. I highlight this in my Bicycle Urbanism by Design TED x talk . We know it was crazy. We know that it was a desperate - and successful - ploy by the automobile industry to claim the streets for themselves, despite the fact t...

It's simply not fair that there are so many board games featuring a car-centric, last-century theme, like this one: Or even this online version . So, together with Doug Gordon, who runs the Brooklyn Spoke blog and who should be immediately followed on Twitter , Erik and Mikael from Copenhagenize Design Company decided to rectify the matter by whipping up a board game for the Life-Sized City. Like so many things regarding cities, the idea is old but still good - snakes (or chutes) and ladders has been around for many centuries - known as Moksha Patam in India. Find a die and start rolling. It ain't easy, sunshine, but it's possible to win. You can also download the .pdf if you want .

A team from Copenhagenize Design Company recently returned from Bangkok where we had the pleasure of working on an exciting project. It is fantastic to be surprised. Thailand's second largest bank, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) , have constructed a 23.5 km long cycle track around Bangkok International Airport - Suvarnabhumi. The beginning of one of the most impressive CSR projects we've ever seen and we are excited to be a part of it. It's not every day projects on this scale see the light of day and we had a fantastic site visit with our partners from SCB, King Power and Superjeew Event . Copenhagenize Design Company have been hired to take the basic idea and simply make it World-Class. It's a brilliant combination of placemaking, infrastructure, planning and communication for a destination for cyclists and Citizen Cyclists alike. Basically developing what could be one of the most interesting bicycle destinations in the world. copenhagenize@suvarnabhumi bike tra...

This just in... hot off the presses. As always, Copenhagenize has its finger on the pulse of breaking news. A roving New York reporter covers cycling in Scandinavia. "If for nothing else the bicycle is blessed in Scandinavia because it saves time." "No other country has done more for the pleasure and comfort of its wheelmen than Denmark..." "The construction of pavements takes in consideration what best can serve the interests of cyclists, and cycle paths are provided near all cities, in some instances leading miles away from town into the country." "...ride to market on their bicycles with baskets strapped to their backs, and other baskets dangling from the handle-bars of the wheel. ... they seldom come to grief, and manage to keep their equilibrium to their journey's end." From the New York Sun. 19 February 1897. 42,979 days ago (based on today's date) (The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 195...