Episode 10 - Political Will - Top 10 Design Elements in Copenhagen's Bicycle Culture

Top 10 Bicycle-Friendly Design Elements in Copenhagen

Chapter 10: Political will

The last design element in the series is not an element in itself, per se.

But rather about having a group of people in positions of responsibility,

who understand the importance of how to design a city for cyclists,

how to design a more liveable city for everybody, who lives there.

In Copenhagen, we have been incredibly lucky to the have had almost an entire generation of planners and politicians

who have understood the importance of reestablishing the bicycle on ... the landscape and making the city a nicer place to live.

We have now risen to the current levels of 36 % of all Copenhageners arriving in the city of Copenhagen

to their workplaces or their places of education on bicycles. But how do we keep on moving forward, that is the question.

Good, better, best

There is, of course, still investment in cycling as transport, we discuss the bridges being built across harbor in the macro-design episode of the series.

In 2013 50 milion extra dollars were allocated to cycling projects in the city Copenhagen.

There are political goal as well, that were established back in 2006 of having 50 % of all commuters

every day to arrive at the workplace or places to education on bicycles.

This is all a sign that investment continues and the goal of getting more people on the bicycles is in many cases taken seriously.

But if you look outside the window, you can look around the city, you can see that things have,

really, stagnated quite a bit here in Copenhagen.

Controversial measures

The current climate at Copenhagen city hall is not really conducive to improving conditions ot getting more people on bicycles.

Over one third of all short trips under 5 km in the city are still done in automobiles.

We have had a policy, for many years, of removing car parking, 2-3 % of it, every single year,

not just for bicycles, but for creating more liveable spaces, planting trees.

Last year, the mayor of Copenhagen decided to put back on 1700 parking spots almost overnight,

reversing really what was almost a decade a policy.

And this is in a city where only 29 % of the households actually own a car. Is there a need of 1700 new parking spots?

The latest "fantastic" idea coming out of the city hall is creating a "Harbor town", underneath the Copenhagen harbor.

If there is one thing that we have learnt from 100 years of traffic engineering, it is,

that if you create more space for cars, more cars will come.

There is a lot of work to be done to make the city more liveable, better for pedestrians, better for cyclists,

encouraging families to stay in the city instead of moving out to the suburbs.

The Duty to inspire

Good, modern, visionary political will is the foundation for recreating our liveable cities.

Its not just about Copenhagen or Amsterdam anymore. There are cities out there who are moving forward rapidly

and there are politicians leading these cities towards the new paradigm. The modern liveable city.

The mayor of Paris, for example, Delanoë, he has done amazing work in the past few years, putting in a fantastic bikeshare system.

Putting in 30 km per hour zones. There is a mayor in Montreal, .... trying to plan city for the next one hundred years

instead of using inspiration from the past one hundred years.

Copenhagen is a head of the curve. It's a city that inspires many other cities around the world.

But we have to maintain a leadership, inspiring other politicians to think differently, to thing about the new paradigm.

Building modern monuments

At the end of the day, for all the stock of bicycles as transport in Copenhagen in cities around the world,

really, has nothing to do with the bicycle at all.

The bicycle is nearly a powerful symbol for what is possible in changing the city to become more liveable.

What we were doing in our work, what people are doing all around the world is much more important.

I like to think that the greatest monument ever erected in Copenhagen and Denmark is the bicycle infrastructural network

that allows all these people to ride bicycles safely and commonly throughout the city on all their daily ...,

to work and back, to the schools, to the supermarkets.

This is a modern monument, and this is the one, that cities and citizens around of the world

to be working hard to erect.
This is nothing less than monumental motion.

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