How To Make Bunch-Rides Safe — And Cycling Safe, Generally.

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My last post arguing that groups of cyclists have an ethical entitlement to ride 2 abreast, or indeed take up the whole road the way cars do, got a few thousand hits in a few days. It’s a hot topic, clearly—not in all countries, certainly not Holland, but definitely hot in countries where many cyclists find themselves …

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Postcard From An Asphalt Ikea

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It is hard to believe smart bohemians of the early twentieth century had a mental image of Australia like the image many of us now have of Sweden or Denmark. In a dog-eat-dog world, this newly federated nation and trade-union stronghold on the other side of Asia somewhere promised to be an ongoing project in social justice. …

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Building For Bikes In Car Cities

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Among those of us batting for bicycle transport, many hold a quaint misconception that travel mode choices are made voluntarily. They suppose that the whole city will swap cars for bikes when they have their awakenings. Those holding onto such hopes make the inductive fallacy that because they personally choose to ride bikes, everyone else …

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Will The City Of Tomorrow Have Driverless Taxis Or Bikes?

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During her 6 years (2007-2013) as Commissioner of New York’s Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan partially restored 317 linear miles of 19th-century streets so they could be used for a similar kind of non-motorized mode (cycling) to the mode for which they were laid out (horse-drawn transportation). 317 sounds like a lot. Like a revolution, coupled with statistics showing …

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Summary Of Bicycle Urbanism Design Lab Experiments In Recent Months

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For the past year, I have been leading teams of MA and Ph.D. students at the University of Tasmania, Australia, in a range of pure research and research-by-design projects. One of the questions we have been asking is, “what might a purpose-built bicycling city actually look like?” Would it have streets, alleys, or free-flowing ground …

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You can’t say utopia on the radio

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Don’t you hate when a media outlet preps you with questions, you spend an hour or two writing responses on paper, preparing your mind for the big moment, then when the interview comes, it is about some other topic entirely? A producer for ABC Radio National Drive got in touch last week and asked what …

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The elegant device as a paragon for city planning

This might seem arcane, but it’s obvious that every architectural or urban design act refers back to a pinnacle. In Renaissance times, it was the body. Whether through analogy (e.g., the civic administration building is the head, the church is the heart, the neighborhoods are the hands, etc.) or simply by copying proportions, architecture and …

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Blue Maps – The Recycle Space Map

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Here is a mapping technique highlighting the possibility of bicycling heterotopias in just about any city. It has been designed to help people imagine greenways built along non-vehicular easements (waterways and rail corridors, for example), unlocking potential new redevelopment districts where bike-friendly building types like the one below would be the basis of a new kind …

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Toward a critical regionalist approach to bike planning

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Pedestrian advocates will never tell you that life as a walker invariably leads to one thing: public transport. Driving always struck me as a very expensive way to get fat. As for life as a car-free pedestrian, I gave it a shot, first when I lived in Singapore and later when I lived in New …

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Cycle Specific Attire: The good, The bad And The Worth Owning

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Riding a bike in the city wearing business attire is like walking a dog in Central Park. It’s an innocuous, necessary act for some people, but one that they obviously love for the opportunity afforded to parade yuppie status. If carrying a mug of tea made at home past all the cafes is too gratuitous, …

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