Colville-Andersen begins with some background and context: why "life-sized cities" work, the importance of design for enabling cycling, and the potential of cycling, which can do a lot more than get people to work: "The bicycle belongs in cities. It's transport, it's a shopping cart, it's a family adhesive, it's an analog dating app. ... It's the most perfect vehicle for urban living ever invented."
But cycling needs to be democratised and normalised: "Anyone who actually knows how much their bicycle weighs is probably not someone you want advocating cycling for the 99%." The "bull in society's china shop" is the car, and enabling cycling means breaking down car-centric planning and status. Colville-Andersen's suggestions here include restricting speeds and strict liability, along with some less serious ideas such as car helmets, mandatory health warnings on cars, and car horns that are as loud inside as outside.
Next up is a look at Copenhagen's "learning curve" and lessons from its history, including some of the failed ideas: "safer" but less direct routes as alternatives to main road provision, bi-directional cycle tracks, and a poorly designed cycle bridge put in as recently as 2016. And there is some debunking of common excuses made in other cities: "too hilly", "too hot or too cold", "no history or culture of cycling", "cars are too cheap", "no space", "too much space", "no one cycles here", "can't use a bike for X", and "it'll take forty years".
Architecture and psychology highlight the integration of cycling with design, the need for direct routes, the human desire to "get there quickly" and the importance of making cycling the fastest mode, the role of intermodal connections, especially with rail, and the importance of data: "Observation is power. Citizens see more clearly than engineers and planners as they move through the public space. Their space. We must follow their lead."
After this general background, Colville-Andersen turns to "the toolbox" of ideas, beginning with best practice in infrastructure design: "There are only four basic designs in Danish bicycle planning. One of these four fits every street in the Danish Kingdom and, indeed, every street in every city in the world." The specialised topics touched on include island bus stops, contra-flow cycling, "shared space", network planning, the approaches taken by organisations such as the US NACTO and the Norwegian National Road Directorate, ways to prioritise cycling, cargo cycle logistics, design and innovation, transferable ideas, and communication and advocacy.
Colville-Andersen is sometimes acerbic and there are a few ideas that he seems a bit extreme about: notably an aversion to e-bikes and bi-directional cycle tracks. He toots the horn occasionally for his own consultancy, but does so in the context of the challenges he has faced working in cities around the world, so this is mostly interesting rather than annoying.
Copenhagenize is a complement to books such as the Bruntlett's Building the Cycling City, which draws more on the Dutch experience, and Walker's Bike Nation, which is more UK-centric. It perhaps presupposes a reader already committed to cycling, but has something for anyone who is — as an advocate, as a political leader, or as an engineer, planner, or designer.
September 2024
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- Melissa + Chris Bruntlett - Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality
- books about Scandinavia + Scandinavian history
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