Copenhagenize
The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism
296 pages
8 x 9
200 color photographs and figures
296 pages
8 x 9
200 color photographs and figures
The bicycle enjoyed a starring role in urban history over a century ago, but now it is back, stronger than ever. It is the single most important tool for improving our cities. Designing around it is the most efficient way to make our cities life-sized—to scale cities for humans. It is time to cement the bicycle firmly in the urban narrative in US and global cities.
Enter urban designer Mikael Colville-Andersen. He has worked for dozens of global cities on bicycle planning, strategy, infrastructure design, and communication. He is known around the world for his colorful personality and enthusiasm for the role of bike in urban design. In Copenhagenize, he shows cities how to effectively and profitably re-establish the bicycle as a respected, accepted, and feasible form of transportation.
Building on his popular blog of the same name, Copenhagenize offers vivid project descriptions, engaging stories, and best practices, alongside beautiful and informative visuals to show how to make the bicycle an easy, preferred part of everyday urban life.
Copenhagenize will serve as inspiration for everyone working to get the bicycle back into our cities. It will give planners and designers the ammunition to push back against the Automobile Age and convince the skeptics of the value of the life-sized city. This is not a guide on how to become Copenhagen, but how to learn from the successes and failures (yes, failures) of Copenhagen and other cities around the world that are striving to become more livable.
We need to act in order to save our cities—and us—from ourselves. Copenhagenize shows the path forward.
"I can't say enough good things about [this book]...Everyone who cares about cities (and bikes) should read it."
Treehugger
"I highly recommend this easy accessible, fascinating book to anyone interested in promoting or learning about cycling for transport in cities. Colville-Andersen's international background as well as his personal and professional experience in bicycling and design make this book a treasure trove of information, best practices, and inspiration."
Journal of Urban Affairs
"Provocative and entertaining."
CHOICE
"Extraordinarily informed and informative, Copenhagenize is a deftly crafted study that is as 'real world practical' as it is inspiring in its vision of a more eco-friendly urban environment...ideal and unreservedly recommended."
Midwest Book Review
"The life-size city is a wonderful concept, straightforward, realistic, and easy to understand—especially in America, which suffers hugely from super-sized suburbia. The future is telling us clearly to make new arrangements, and the bicycle makes much more sense than the techno-narcissistic fantasy of driverless cars."
James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency"
"Mikael Colville-Andersen has truly created the definitive guide to the future of our cities in this book. From desire lines to the arrogance of space, the concepts Mikael lays out act as an instruction manual for not only better bicycle urbanism, but a more human city for everyone. There are no minced words here—only a clear and concise framework for what the twenty-first-century city should be, with the humble bicycle front and center."
Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, urban anthropologist and Founder/Director of THINK.urban
"Mikael is the world's most convincing bicycle advocate because he is not really an advocate at all but an extraordinary spellbinder who happens to love bicycling. I see many thoughtful people becoming enchanted by this book and then bicycling forth to build their own human-scale streets as 'monuments to human ingenuity.'"
Paul Steely White, Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives
Contents
Introduction
1. The Life-Sized City
2. Bicycle Urbanism by Design
3. The Bicycle's Role in Urban Life
4. The Redemocratization of Cycling
5. Taming the Bull in Society's China Shop
The Learning Curve
6. Copenhagen's Journey
7. Climaphobia and Vacuum-Packed Cities
8. Arrogance of Space
9. Mythbusting
10. Architecture
11. Desire Lines & Understanding Behavior
12. A Secret Cycling Language
13. A2Bism
14. The Art of Gathering Data
The Toolbox
15. Best-Practice Design & Infrastructure
16. Prioritizing Cycling
17. Design & Innovation
18. Cargo Bike Logistics
19. Curating Transferable Ideas
20. Communication & Advocacy
Conclusion
This week we are spotlighting Chicago as city to look to for bicycle urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen, author of Copenhagenize and CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company, has chosen Chicago as one of his five favorite cities in America for bicycle infrastructure.
"Chicago is clearly one of the cities in America with a massive potential for shifting trips to bicycles. It has worked in varying degrees of consistency for a number of years but with flashes of inspiration, like the Kinzie protected bike lane. Let’s forget that it is just one stretch of city street and not a comprehensive network and focus on on the in-your-faceness of it. A bold forest of bollards, a good swath of width that states the city’s intention on planning for bicycle traffic growth and green strips across the intersections. A great stretch of infrastructure that survived calls for its removal back in 2015 and that will hopefully form the backbone for a future network." - Mikael Colville-Andersen
On the ground, West Town Bikes is working to promote bicycling and bicycle infrastructue in Chicago.
The mission of West Town Bikes is to use bicycles as a tool to build community. The over-arching goals of West Town Bikes are to promote bicycling in the city of Chicago, to educate youth with a focus on under-served populations, and to foster and serve Chicago's growing bicycling community. While maintaining headquarters and a workspace in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, WTB is a city-wide service provider for youth programs in the city of Chicago.
The youth of West Town Bikes are part of the growing cycling community, they are experts on issues of providing safe passages to youth attractions. Teens are looking for reliable and affordable alternatives to driving, and our city needs to keep up with this growing demand. With this in mind, youth planned and designed the Circuit, a connected and comfortable route for young people to commute from Chicago neighborhoods of Humboldt Park, Logan Square and Avondale.
By building a route like The Circuit, they are helping cultivate a new generation of active transportation commuters. It is important to include the voices of youth and minorities in urban planning in order to realize a more accurate and fair representation of a community’s exigencies. They've educated themselves on bikeways, gathered data on their environment and created a plan with best routes. With all this in mind, we are eager to see a route built that benefits a diverse and underrepresented group of people.
Click here to read WTB’s report on the Circuit program. West Town Bikes presented this to Chicago's Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council, which Commissioner of the Chicago Dept. of Transportation Rebekah Scheinfeld presides over, and it received tremendous support which has led to it being adopted by the CDOT Bike Program and integrated into their bikeways workplan. For more information on the Circuit program, check out this video.
Don't forget to enter our bike month sweepstakes below.
This week we are spotlighting Austin as city to look to for bicycle urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen, author of Copenhagenize and CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company, has chosen Austin as one of his five favorite cities in America for bicycle infrastructure.
"The MoPac bicycle and pedestrian bridge in Austin is well worth a mention here. Bicycle infrastructure is the best investment with the best cost-benefit in the history of transportation. Where many cities struggle merely with painted bike lanes, a project on this scale is brilliant. No planner in their right mind would mix bicycles with motorized traffic doing 40 mph or more and the MoPac bridge demonstratively and elegantly makes this point by providing a safe traverse of the valley, far from the vehicles on the pre-existing bridge off to the side. I’ll politely refrain from exploring what infrastructure has been implemented on either side to provide access to the crossing and merely revel in the fact that this bridge was planned, financed and built." - Mikael Colville Andersen
Bike Austin envisions Central Texas as a place where everyone recognizes and embraces the benefits of cycling, whether they ride or not, and where cycling is a common aspect of daily life for everyone. Central Texas has a comprehensive bicycle network enabling people in the region to comfortably, safely, and efficiently use a bike for transportation and recreation. Bicycling supports the community as a whole by increasing roadway capacity and user mobility, strengthening the economy and household affordability, improving the environment, and promoting an active, healthy lifestyle.
Over the last two and a half years, Bike Austin and our volunteers and supporters have:
In a recent interview, Executive Director Katie Deolloz higlighted Bike Austin's Bike Month programming:
"At Bike Austin we are preparing for Bike To Work Day on May 18 and encouraging individuals and workplace teams to sign up for the Love to Ride Biking Challenge. We are focusing on people who would consider themselves 'interested but concerned' when it comes to riding a bicycle as traffic, rather than on a trail or in a protected bike lane. These are individuals who will tell you honestly that they are 'afraid' to ride, and their concerns are not without merit. However, the more people who are outside riding their bicycles, the more normal it will become, the greater the demand will be for improved infrastructure, and the safer everyone will be on the streets of Austin."
If you're in Austin, help Bike Austin celebrate Bike Month and get more cyclists on the road by signing up for their Bike to Work Day Ride and Love to Ride Biking Challenge!
Don't forget to enter our bike month sweepstakes below.
This week we are spotlighting Missoula as city to look to for bicycle urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen, author of Copenhagenize and CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company, has chosen Missoula as one of his five favorite cities in America for bicycle infrastructure.
"We often look to large cities to provide us with innovation and inspiration. It is, however, always a thrill when smaller cities take the bull by the horns and design for the future. Like Missoula, Montana. Looking at the city’s website, they look like they have their gameface on for improving conditions for cycling as transport. I’ll leave them alone for now for broadcasting their many sharrows and instead focus on a decent example of bicycle infrastructure: the North Higgins Avenue raised cycle track. Running for a stretch through downtown, this facility is better than what can be found in many North American cities. Unidirectional on both sides of the street, this cycle track will hopefully serve as inspiration for Missoula to upgrade and modernize their network to match it." - Mikael Colville Anderson
Free Cycles Missoula formed in 1996 to provide bikes, parts and help for healthy community. In the early days, free roaming green bikes pedaled the streets of the town. 'Hop on and ride bicycles' shifted to a community bike shop, festivals, and school outreach in the late '90s.
Since its inception, Free Cycles has provided 19,000 free bikes to people in need, seen 200,000 people come through the shop doors and 6,000 people take the popular BikeWell class. BikeWell is a precursor to people making their own free bike, and instills an ethic of bike maintenance, shop involvement, and city design principals. People helping people is a tenet that guides Free Cycles' day to day work. What started as a strong environmental effort to clean up the air has bloomed into a strong social effort to get the city pedaling. Four core values have emerged for Free Cycles: citizen involvement, environmental stewardship, reuse and recycle, and more active transportation.
Missoula Institute for Sustainable Transport (MIST), the umbrella for Free Cycles, has focused on the 'city as a body' since 1997, making transportation safe, equitable and environmentally sound. MIST is growing knowledge, relationships, and infrastructure to improve Missoula's collective system of movement. MIST has worked to improve streets, trails, parks and plazas. Highlights include road diets, modern roundabouts, cycle tracks, bike lanes, urban trails and safe walkways. A more recent effort is the sustainable paving initiative with a focus on clay pavers and psyllium seed husk, for transportation health and longevity.
Bob Giordano, Director of Free Cycles, says, "We are driven by the benefits of fun, active transportation and the beauty of place. Missoula is full of people that care and non-profits making a better world, for all walks of life. We recently purchased our 2 acre home in the heart of Missoula. Projects in progress include a pedal power fabrication center, a bicycle garden and a Transportation Learning Center. With continued focus on community participation and engagement, the future looks bright!"
Don't forget to enter our bike month sweepstakes below.
This week we are spotlighting Cambridge as city to look to for bicycle urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen, author of Copenhagenize and CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company, has chosen Cambridge as one of his five favorite cities in America for bicycle infrastructure.
"Cambridge, Massachusetts has been ahead of the curve in the US for a while. They designed and implemented best practice infrastructure on Vassar Street in 2004 and completed the stretch in 2009. Unidirectional, both sides of the street and a decent width. I’ve ridden on it when I was in Cambridge for work and it was a nice slice of cycling goodness. It shows that protected bicycle infrastructure need not be over-complicated and that it is effective. Cambridge steadily continues to build similar facilities and I certainly hope the goal is a comprehensive network of such infrastructure. Every country needs a leader and Cambridge is a contender for that role in the US, let alone in the Boston region." - Mikael Colville-Andersen
Cambridge Bicycle Safety is volunteer group of Cambridge residents formed after the three cyclists died within two years, to call for the city to act more quickly to build streets that are safe for everyone.
Our goal as parents, students, homeowners, and people who work in Cambridge is to push the city to build out a city-wide network of protected bike lanes on major city streets so all ages and abilities, from young children to our older residents, can travel around the city safely. Cambridge’s dense and mostly flat urban layout makes it an ideal candidate for a network of protected bike lanes, also serving to calm traffic for people who get around on foot.
When we launched in 2016 we gathered over 3,000 signatures calling for the city to act with more urgency. Since then, the city has put in over a mile of quick-build protected bike lanes on Massachusetts Ave, the city’s major commercial and transportation thoroughfare, as well as more substantial lanes on Cambridge Street adjacent to the high school and a hospital. A two-way cycletrack in Harvard Square has been installed which provides the only safe route in and out of this bustling commercial area.
But this progress has been undermined by setbacks, including a small but vocal group of abutters who do not see the benefits of a city-wide protected network. As a result, some planned safety improvement projects have been inexplicably dropped and more often than not roads designated for protected facilities in the City’s Bike Plan are reconstructed as the status quo. The city’s planned safety improvements for Porter Square where two people died in 2016 are largely just paint and signal timing—they include no protection for bicyclists or pedestrians. These are all missed opportunities for building out the connected city-wide network our residents deserve.
In early May, we rallied with over 200 people, including many young families, to #DemandMore and formed Cambridge’s first people-protected bike lanes -- which may also have been the world’s first brass-band-and-people protected bike lane. By working productively and respectfully with city leadership and staff, our hope is that we can work together to rapidly build out that network.
Don't forget to enter our bike month sweepstakes below.
This week we are spotlighting Utah as a place to look to for bicycle urbanism. Mikael Colville-Andersen, author of Copenhagenize and CEO of Copenhagenize Design Company, looks at Salt Lake City, Utah as one of his five favorite cities in America for bicycle infrastructure.
"Designs for Dutch-style, protected intersections were on the table in America back in the late 1960s in Davis, California but died a painful death of indifference. Davis put one in back in 2015, followed promptly by Salt Lake City two months later. The intersection of 200 S and 300 W is not a busy intersection but damn, it's great to see it in action. Wild to think how difficult such an intersection seems in the eyes of many American transportation planners and wilder to think how effortless it actually is to design and build. What makes this intersection extra cool is that it is attached to the 300 S cycle track - one of the best of its kind in the nation.
I find it interesting that in my international network, Salt Lake City is now on the map because of this protected intersection where the city - sorry SLC - didn't quite register on the the radar before it was built. Bike infrastructure as city branding is the new black." - Mikael Colville-Andersen
Bike Utah is the statewide, nonprofit bicycle advocacy and education organization. They are working to make Utah a better place to ride. Their vision is a Utah where bicycling contributes to livable, healthy communities; where networks of bike lanes, paths, and trails allow everyone to ride, regardless of age, ability, or income.
Over the past 3 years, Bike Utah has launched numerous programs and campaigns that have helped to shift how individuals and communities view bicycling as a means of transportation and recreation. Here is a quick overview of three of their efforts:
Youth Bicycle Education and Safety Training (BEST)
The Youth BEST is a 5-hour, on-bike program that is administered at schools, targeting students in the 4th to 7th grade range. Bike Utah provides a trained instructor, bicycles, helmets, and all other equipment at no cost for the duration of the program. Over the course of the program students learn about: the benefits of riding a bicycle; the rules of the road; helmet fitting; bicycle safety checks; navigating intersections; right of way; and avoiding hazards. Since the program launched in fall of 2016, more than 5,000 kids have participated. hey have increased their interest in riding and improved their knowledge of safe bicycling.
Wasatch Bike Plan
Currently 85% of Utah’s population lives in four counties along western boundary of the Wasatch Mountains (also known as the Wasatch Front). By 2050, the population in each of the four Wasatch Front counties is expected to increase anywhere from 52% to 136%. The goal of the Wasatch Bike Plan campaign is to create the future of bicycling along the Wasatch Front by initiating bicycle and pedestrian master plans in every community in all four Wasatch Front counties. Our lives don’t stop at community boundaries and neither should bike lanes and paths. When Bike Utah started the campaign two years ago, approximately 33% of the communities had active transportation plans. This figure is now just shy of 50%.
1,000 Miles Campaign
In May 2017, Utah’s Governor Herbert stated a goal of developing 1,000 miles of family-friendly bicycle lanes, paths, and trails, as it improves numerous aspects associated with living, working, and playing in Utah. The Governor designated Bike Utah as the nonprofit partner to carry out implementation of the 1,000 Miles Campaign. Through the 1,000 Miles Campaign, Bike Utah provides strategic planning, technical assistance, and financial resources so communities can begin or continue developing bicycling in their area. Safe, connected infrastructure is the biggest reason people choose to ride for recreation and transportation.
Find out more about Bike Utah and their other initiatives at bikeutah.org
Don't forget to enter our bike month sweepstakes below.