Set realistic goals, keep re-evaluating, and be consistent.
Two of the major themes in this book are “everything has been invented” and “copy/paste” in order to redesign our cities for the better. However, it might be relevant to highlight an important disclaimer and to squeeze in some thoughts about what is transferable. There are some unique aspects to a cycling life in Copenhagen and Denmark that may not be applicable to other cities or countries.
Virtually every bicycle in Copenhagen is equipped with a kickstand and, I’ve observed, this is the case in many cities in Europe. The idea of parking zones without any physical bike rack, therefore, may not fly elsewhere. Personally, I can’t imagine cycling in the city without a kickstand, and the very idea makes me flinch. Many people who visit Copenhagen wander past the filled bike racks and are convinced that none of the bikes are locked. But they are—in fact, the vast majority of Danish bicycles are locked with locks that secure the back wheel. While the design of the wheel lock, also called an O lock, is timeless, nevertheless you don’t often see them outside of cycling cities in Denmark, the Netherlands, China, and Japan. Due in part to the nature of the democratic perception of bicycles in Denmark, wheel locks are the default. A parking zone is an easy solution when most bikes are mounted with them. Easily 90 percent of the bike racks in Denmark for the past many decades have been the simple design that secures the front wheel and prevents the bicycle from falling over. Your average hard-core bike geek hates such a design and can probably rant for hours about these so-called wheel benders. The 99% in Denmark don’t seem to mind, though, and I have used them daily for almost 25 years without a hitch. Pretty much everywhere else, apart from Japan, cyclists are used to locking their bike to a physical object with a heavy theft-deterrent chain or a U lock, and fair enough. While I wish that the Danish conditions could be transferred everywhere else, this isn’t realistic in the short term. Therefore, there needs to be a concerted effort in cities to provide convenient bike racks with intuitive ease of use.
Classic wheel lock on the back wheel.
One of my great urban pleasures is cycling in Dutch cities. The absolute saturation of bicycles is one of the great transportation ballets in the world and it is always a wild, enjoyable ride.
As an extension of the Danish bike lock culture, the Danish bike insurance system is unique in the world. It has been streamlined over the years to be advantageous to both the user and the insurance companies. As a rule, your bike is automatically part of your home insurance up to a certain amount that includes the bikes you use in your daily life. If you have a fancy sports bike or a cargo bike, you will usually have to buy a supplement. If you buy a new bike in Denmark, it must be equipped with a wheel lock. This is due to lobbying done by the insurance industry, which wanted to sleep a bit easier at night knowing that every bike has a lock. Bicycles in Denmark have had frame numbers etched into the metal since the 1920s, and when you buy a new bike it is registered to you in the system. If my bike gets stolen, the process is simple. I fill out a report on the police website, typing in my social security number and the frame number of the bike as well as details about my insurance company. I copy/ paste the case number in the insurance company website when I am making my claim. A couple of days later I receive whatever money I have coming to me and I hurry out to get a new bike—because my daily life requires it.
When the police and the City regularly clean up the bike racks and remove the abandoned bikes, the frame numbers indicate which insurance company technically owns them. This is an extraordinary system that streamlines the process between having a bike stolen and getting a new one. It is brilliant for the individual citizen, but it does pose some difficult challenges and ethical questions. Nearly 400,000 bikes are scrapped every year in Denmark, and Danes buy 500,000 new ones, which means that every decade there are one million extra bikes in the country. It is ironic that the insurance industry has insisted on equipping all new bikes with wheel locks, and yet they are completely indifferent to dealing with the issue of scrapping bikes that could otherwise be put back into circulation either in Denmark or in countries that could use them. Nor do they make any further substantive effort to tackle the issue of bike theft. Indeed, stolen bikes mean more people buying home insurance, especially young people. The police aren’t very helpful either, and even if you’re standing there having apprehended a bike thief, they are unlikely to send out officers if you call them. It’s a big confusing mix of positive and negative and something quite unique in the Danish context.
When we talk about the design of bicycle infrastructure, there is sometimes the issue of what is permitted in municipal, regional, or national standards. I’m not going to address those because, with effective lobby work, standards can be changed. As you have probably sensed from my focus on best-practice design, I am convinced that copy/pasting the best solutions into any city in the world is the preferable solution. The experiences of cities like Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Almetyevsk, Russia, are key to understanding that choosing the right designs gets the best results. Copenhagenize Design Company in particular and other organizations in general host hundreds of international delegation participants from around the world every year—whether politicians, planners, engineers, or advocates. The ones who cross an ocean seem to follow a pattern that involves getting the most out of their trip. They will often visit the Netherlands first and then come to Copenhagen afterwards.
I have been asking the same couple of questions for years. First, we discuss their experiences in Amsterdam or one of the other cities they visited, and they invariably talk with great enthusiasm about the wild experience they had and all the things they saw. Then I ask, “If you squinted your eyes in Amsterdam or Utrecht, could you envision your own city?” The answer is always a resounding “No way!” After they have been on one of our bicycle urbanism bike tours or have spent some time in Copenhagen, I ask, “If you squint your eyes here, can you envision your own city?” The answer is just as resounding: “Oh, yes, absolutely!” If, on their trip to the Netherlands, they visited Rotterdam, they are also more likely to see direct inspiration for whatever city they are from.
I’m just convinced that cities are best served by adopting designs that are appropriate and feasible for their own city. We’re not redesigning our cities for the next couple of months—we’re planning transport for the next century.
While the city center of Copenhagen is well over a thousand years old, with all the winding and confusing streets that that entails, the rest of the city, where the great majority of our citizens live, is a twentieth-century invention. The streets radiating out from the ancient city center are wide and used to accommodate a fine network of trams. At street level, between the façades of the buildings, it is easy to see how things would work in other cities.
One of my great urban pleasures is cycling in Dutch cities. The absolute saturation of bicycles creates one of the great transportation ballets in the world and it is always a wild, enjoyable ride. The bicycle is clearly king in a city like Amsterdam, while in Copenhagen, I dare say, it remains the crown princess waiting in the wings for her shot at the throne. The daily parasite invasion continues to delay the coronation. While cycling levels are virtually identical in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it feels as though bicycles are absolutely everywhere in the former. Coming at you from every direction at all hours of the day. It is important to remember that the primary reason for this difference between the two cities is not a question of culture but rather of layout. There is only one Amsterdam and it is quite unlikely that there will ever be another—unless, of course, some crazy Gulf state decides to build one from scratch in the desert outside of Dubai. The same applies to other Dutch cities. But although I enjoy every minute of cycling in Amsterdam, I am always a little bit relieved when I get home to Copenhagen. Due to the layout of the cities, I have often compared the cyclists of Amsterdam to swarming bees, whereas in Copenhagen the biomimicry metaphor of marching ants is more appropriate. You are welcome to your own personal opinion. I’m just convinced that cities are best served by adopting designs that are appropriate and feasible for their own city. We’re not redesigning our cities for the next couple of months—we’re planning transport for the next century.
Even if we work incrementally due to budget restrictions or whatnot, maintaining a strict uniformity is vital from the very beginning. I usually stay at the same hotel every time I am in Amsterdam, located about 20 minutes from the central station. It’s a route that I know very well. I can’t help but notice, every time I cycle this route, that I get to experience a wild mix of infrastructure design as well as surfacing. Sometimes it’s asphalt, and then it becomes bricks or paving stones. I ride on a cycle track on one side of the street, turn right onto a bidirectional, turn left onto a street with no infrastructure at all … and so it continues for the entire route. While it’s an interesting freestyle potpourri that keeps me guessing, it is not very uniform or intuitive. We can discuss whether this is due to planners doing their best to squeeze the bicycle into every street or simply to lazy planners and politicians without a clear vision. I have a similar experience in other Dutch cities as well as cities like Strasbourg and Antwerp. If you live in these cities and develop familiar routes on your A-to-B-to-C journeys, wayfinding becomes second nature. The hallmark of good design is how intuitive it is for people who are using it for the first time, be it a smartphone, a coffee machine, or a bicycle infrastructure network.
My own experience after cycling in scores of cities and participating in hundreds of conversations with visitors and colleagues in Copenhagen leads me to conclude that uniformity in bicycle infrastructure design is paramount. You can arrive in Copenhagen for the first time in your life, grab a bike, and head out to explore with a gentle and short learning curve. In addition, you can hop on a train to most other Danish cities and, when you get off the train, the infrastructure is much the same. Enabling you to cycle safely, intuitively, and effectively to whatever destination you choose. Now that the bicycle is returning to emerging bicycle cities, I would hope that the planners and politicians realize the importance of gentle and short learning curves.
I often bring my children with me when I travel for work and, as ever, their observations are worth their weight in gold. When we spent a few days in Groningen, it was absolutely a more positive bike experience than Vancouver. Copenhagen kids can effortlessly weave themselves into the bicycle fabric of a Dutch city, and it was fun to watch them do so. It’s worth mentioning that I merely ask questions of the kids, never leading them on and forcing them to think too much about a subject. I only want pure observations. If they don’t have any, then they don’t have any and I leave it at that. After we had cycled to the hotel from the train station, Felix said, “I was a bit nervous riding on the cycle track from the station and then through the city. There were all these pedestrians trying to cross, so I had to watch out for them. Oh, and there are loads of ladies bikes.”
In the evening on the second day, after we had been riding a lot more around the city, I asked the kids if they had any more observations. Felix had put some thought into it.
Felix: “It’s like I feel more secure cycling in Copenhagen.”
Mikael: “You weren’t scared?”
Felix: “No, no, not at all. I just feel more secure.” (Here he used a Danish word tryg, which doesn’t quite mean safe, but rather indicates a sense of security or feeling comfortable.) “At home I don’t need to worry about pedestrians suddenly crossing the cycle track. And here, the cyclists don’t signal when they’re turning or stopping like they do in Copenhagen. And the cars don’t, either.”
Mikael: “The cars don’t signal?”
Felix: “Many didn’t.”
Mikael: “Jeroen [our friend and guide] signaled turns all the time, didn’t he?”
Felix: “Daddy, that’s just because he was at the front and he was showing us that we’re turning because we didn’t know the way.”
Mikael: “But generally you like it?”
Felix: “Yeah! It’s cool!”
Mikael: “What do you think, Lulu?”
Lulu: “I don’t like those bumpy stones.”
Mikael: “Cobblestones?”
Lulu: “Yeah.”
Felix: “It’s like, in Copenhagen I know where I’m supposed to be and where everyone else is supposed to be. Here, I don’t know who is coming in front of me, all of a sudden. At intersections, some people turn on the right side of you and some turn on the left, cutting in front of you. There isn’t a lot of … um … structure.”
Lulu: “What’s structure?”
Mikael: “It’s like in your room when it’s clean and everything is in its place. The socks are in the socks drawer, your dresses are in your dress drawer, and stuff like that.”
Lulu: “That’s not often.” Uh … no.
Felix: “But Copenhagen is a big city. Groningen isn’t. Maybe you need more structure in a big city.”
Mikael: “What about when we were riding on streets with cars and buses? You kept checking back at me and Lulu to make sure we saw the car coming, didn’t you? You called out ‘car!’ a couple of times to let us know.”
Felix: “Yeah, but they weren’t going very fast. I was just making sure Lulu was on the right side.”
Good big brother. We headed to Amsterdam next, to visit friends. Felix had his own bike and Lulu and I rode an Onderwater tandem designed for an adult and a kid.
Felix: “It’s kind of like a mix of Copenhagen and Groningen. Copenhagen feels more like a big city. Amsterdam is like a village, but still a bit like a city. I guess Amsterdam is like 60 percent Copenhagen and 40 percent Groningen, or something.”
Mikael: “What else did you notice?”
Felix: “Why did we have to push buttons to cross streets on bikes? We don’t have that in Copenhagen.”
Mikael: “Good question.”
Felix: “We had to watch out for lots of pedestrians, like in Groningen. Oh, and nobody signals here, either. And nobody rings bells.”
All in all, interesting observations from the kids. As a balance, I have conducted comparative interviews with kids coming from the opposite direction. For a few years, I rented a large room in my apartment through Airbnb and had a lot of families staying with us, including many Dutch, Germans, and Belgians. If the kids—and parents—cycled daily at home, I would grill the kids whenever I could, asking them for some comparative observations. They were comfortable with cycling at home—we are all creatures of habits—but the majority commented on the ease of use of the infrastructure and the intuitiveness of it when getting around a city they didn’t know.
There is an enormous amount of inspiration in Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, and a growing number of cities around the world. We have to curate it with care and select the right design solutions for the right situations, and we must always choose the best and simplest. We have to be realistic. I would like nothing more than to see every city in the world free of cars and motorized transport and instead embrace a workable, feasible combination of human-powered movement and public transport. But I won’t live to see that. Neither will you. We need to work with the ideas that are in place and that apply, using the tools that we already possess and proceeding with a clear and well-defined vision of what is possible. Time is of the essence.
Felix and Lulu-Sophia in Groningen.
Cyclists—and friends—waiting for the light to change in Amsterdam.