Bicycle Culture by Design: Mikael Colville-Andersen
I’m an optimist
um but I’d like to put the next 15
minutes or so into perspective for you
and I’m gonna need your help for that I
know it’s early in the morning but I
like everybody in the room to please
clap at this tempo cool that was thank
you I was quicker than I expected
finding the rhythm for every time we
clapped our hands somebody somewhere in
the world was injured in a car accident
96 beats per minute 1.2 million people
died globally around the road around the
world in Europe and the United States
every year almost 35,000 people are
killed in car accidents on our roads do
you know what that is that’s a 911
collapsing World Trade Center towers
almost every single month and almost
every single month for the past 60 years
at least I can’t be alone in thinking
that this is rather in the same there is
no war on this terror we’ve accepted a
status quo in our societies that is
quite unacceptable and I decided to find
out why we had reached this point and
more importantly what we could do to
make things better and to think
differently firstly we have to look at
the streets themselves what are streets
for 7,000 years since our sis our cities
first were formed streets had a very
singular definition there were the space
in which we transported ourselves of
course but also the space in which we
met gather talk to our neighbors
gossiped where we sold our goods where
our children played there were
extensions of our homes of our living
rooms they were public domain probably
the most democratic spaces in the
history of homosapiens now a lot of
people seem to have this perception that
streets are the exclusive domain of
automobiles and I discovered that two
main things happened to cause this
massive paradigm shift in our perception
of streets firstly in the rapid
urbanization of the late 1800s in the
early 1900’s engineers were the urban
heroes of the day tackling any and all
problems that cities could throw at them
they did very well but when the
automobile showed up people started
dying
nobody had a solution to the traffic
safety problem so almost in desperation
engineers were handed the job in
collaboration with the automobile
industry who saw an opportunity but
almost overnight streets became regarded
as public utilities like water supply
electricity or like sewers puzzles to be
solved with mathematical equations
secondly the automobile industry had a
problem they had products to sell and
yet everybody hated them this was
something called the anti automobile age
cars were despised motorists were too
tested the automobile industry used
techniques or they started to use their
techniques like marketing spin and good
old-fashioned ridicule to change
people’s perceptions they started
campaigns for example against what they
called jaywalking crossing the street in
the middle of the block now in the
American slang of the day a J was a
derogatory term for a country bumpkin a
redneck somebody who didn’t know the
ways of the cool big city people were
ridiculed when they tried to cross the
street in the middle of the block and
seven thousand year old habit Boy Scouts
were enlisted handing out flyers to
these people chastising them for the
behavior also anybody who was against
cars they were labeled as old-fashioned
standing in the way of progress he’s
very effective techniques nobody in our
cities likes to be considered
old-fashioned and really nobody anywhere
likes to be ridiculed
so pedestrians were herded up to the
street corners to use these things
called crosswalks children were
shepherded into these newly invented
things called playgrounds and finally
the streets were clear of these
irritating obstacles and the stage was
set for the paradigm shift
probably the greatest paradigm shift in
the history of our cities and here we
are today
welcome to the tail end of 100 years of
traffic engineering what do we have to
show for it very little nobody’s figured
out how to make traffic flow more
effectively how to ease congestion or
how to stop people from getting killed
or injured streets carve up our cities
like angry rivers slicing through sand
traffic safety problems but also
pollution social exclusion if you look
at it long and hard we live in cities
that are controlled by bizarre often
outdated mathematical models and
equations cost-benefit analyses impact
assessments even lovely cities like
Copenhagen and NZ
sometimes it feels like we’re all just
characters in the matrix
seriously cities around the world can’t
put in a simple decent cycle track or or
widen a sidewalk traffic all my
neighborhood lower the speed limits
because it doesn’t fit into the
mathematical equation on the computer
down in the engineering department so
many ideas die on their doorstep let me
ask you is there a way out of the matrix
urbanization is on the rise now more
than ever before and we need new
solutions and we need them in a hurry
should we really be engineering
something as human and organic as public
streets it’s the people who define a
city shouldn’t be studying their
behavior their patterns their movements
their desires their needs in order how
to further and figure out how to further
develop our cities if you think about it
it worked for about 7,000 years I think
there’s a pretty good chance that’s
going to work again there’s two things
that we need one is basic human
observation something we all share call
it anthropology sociology find when you
boil it down it’s just the simple act of
people studying what other people are
doing watching in 1958 the French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard described
this idea of desire lines desire lines
is the most beautiful expression in
urban planning this is an example from
Copenhagen this is a street corner on
the busiest bicycle street in the world
the city discovered that a couple
thousand cyclists were cutting across a
sidewalk here to get to a parallel
street instead of handing out tickets to
them all day long they observed
accepting the fact that there must be a
very good reason for this a temporary
cycle track was put in see how that went
and it was finally made permanent
the subconscious desire lines of just a
couple thousand citizens were respected
this is another example this is the view
from my hotel room in Halifax in Canada
earlier this year fresh snow on the
common the park in the heart of the city
the green lines are the original pathway
is perfect for nineteenth-century
promenade walking your dog on a Sunday
you know going for a run all good things
fine you know but the red lines show you
where the people were actually walking
and cycling in the morning rush hour
from the neighborhoods to the city
centre carving desire lines straight as
arrows through the snow a modern city
would observe and redesign accordingly
desire lines are great we really love
desire lines at my company we we filmed
an intersection in Copenhagen for 12
hours on a random day in April and we
mapped the desire lines of every single
one of the 16,000 558 cyclists who went
through there that day that’s not even a
busy intersection in Copenhagen but hey
I can tell you it was a fascinating
exercise we had an anthropologist
working on it and I can you know there’s
no mathematical model that can replace
12 hours of intense human observation
actually was about probably 150 hours
you know but when you look when you’re
studying and looking for new innovative
solutions for our cities which we are in
my work developing bicycle
infrastructure and bicycle culture in
cities around the world I’m constantly
amazed and baffled and frustrated at how
many planners and engineers have never
even tried to ride a bicycle in their
city or spent any serious time as
pedestrians it’s all office work
computer models maps this brings us to
the second thing that we need for
modernizing our cities design we all
have a relationship with design we all
make design choices every single day
it’s a part of our DNA no matter where
we’re from and here’s the thing a
designer thinks and works differently
than an engineer a designer thinks about
the end user of the product that human
being on the other end of the design
process is everything they work with
functionality usability user
friendliness they work with you know the
concepts like the four types of pleasure
physio socio psycho ideal pleasure and
everything they do designing a city for
bicycles or pedestrians or any aspect of
a truly livable city should be like
designing any other product on the
market a toothbrush a toaster a
smartphone a chair when you all came in
here today you found your seats and you
sat down you didn’t have to take a
moment to contemplate the chair
interpret the designers intentions
figure out how to how to work it you
know where’s the on button you didn’t
have to worry about whether I was gonna
disappear from under you in the middle
of my talk you sat down it was easy and
intuitive
that’s how designing cities for people
should be imagined of riding a bicycle
or walking in the city was that easy or
intuitive that would be cool and it’s
possible design is a powerful and
beautiful tool if we apply it correctly
it can also be seductive making us
forget about all sorts of other
important things 80 percent of us in
this
probably don’t need the smart phones in
our pockets but my god we saved up for
them and hurry down to acquire them to
seduce by the design well-designed
bicycle infrastructure will seduce
people to use it
you make the bicycle the quickest way
from A to B in a city any city in the
world doesn’t matter how hilly how hot
how cold citizens cyclists will ride
seduced by the good design the
convenience and the safety good design
can also improve human behavior I hear
the same thing around the world all
those damned cyclists you know breaking
the law running red lights riding on
sidewalks you know now I have one
response to that those cyclists do not
have adequate bicycle infrastructure
even worse none at all
nevermind the fact that they’re forced
to abide by a traffic culture and
traffic laws that were invented to serve
the automobile a completely different
transport form in Copenhagen in the
morning rush hour when a couple hundred
thousand people ride their bikes to work
it’s different at every traffic light
cycle you have great groups of citizen
cyclists doing something really weird
they’re waiting for the light to turn
green checking their smartphones you
know you know they don’t need to break
the law because they’re on a
well-designed bicycle infrastructure you
know and a whole network of it and if
you think about it regular citizens
don’t want to break the law they don’t
wanna be the rogues of the urban
landscape standing out like a sore thumb
in society they just want to go about
their daily lives go from A to B quickly
efficiently and safely the good cities
of the future have to be based on human
observation and on design principles as
well as listening to the thoughts and
observations of the leading minds in the
field like Lulu Sophia she’s five now
and I’ve been recording her urban
observations for about a year and a half
this is my daughter we’re honored
started about a year and a half ago she
was three and a half and we’re on our
way to the hardware store in Copenhagen
on our cargo bike and as we do and we
stopped at a red light and she was
looking around and all of a sudden she
said daddy look oh it’s a motorbike with
two people on him she was three and a
half okay this concept had never
occurred to her in our young minds I
said cool maybe it’s nice you know maybe
they’re friends it’s nice to ride a
motorbike together they can talk and
stuff look you know you and me we’re two
people on a bike we’re friends we’re
talking
oh she was amazed you know uh-huh off we
went we stopped at a red light further
along I realized in retrospect that she
had been intensely observing her urban
theater looking for other examples of
two people doing this two people doing
that and she she said out of the blue
again rather frustrated daddy
cars are silly I said real evil why why
our car silly because you can’t see the
people in them a three and a half year
old nails at the social exclusion of
automobile Society the anonymity of cars
you know it was it was brilliant and
pure my kids spent about five hours a
year in a car so it’s very pure
observations lucy has a brother his
name’s Felix he’s 10 earlier this year I
thought it’d be interesting to get his
third grade class to redesign the
roundabouts at the intersection by their
school a really badly engineered
roundabouts and without too much input
from me they went to work dividing up
into teams doing site visits you know
talking to each other writing notes and
making drawings okay actually only
making drawings or in the third grade
but it was it was fantastic their
solutions were brilliant okay one of
them was that they wanted glass roofs on
all the streets and cycle tracks and
sidewalks so they never ever got wet in
the rain but apart from that their their
solutions were logical rationale based
on human observation personal experience
and human need if we allow ourselves to
think like these rational and logical
children we free our minds planning for
intelligent transport forms like cycling
like walking becomes much easier the
glass roofs were a funny idea but you
know what as we speak there are cities
in the Netherlands who are installing
rain sensors on their bicycle traffic
lights so that when it rains or snows or
gets too cold
those cyclists are prioritized right
through those intersections you know
getting those people home in a hurry
through the rain simple rational logical
in Copenhagen we have the Green Wave in
place on several arteries leading to the
city centre 20 kilometres per hour and
you hit green all the way into the city
and all the way home again in the
afternoon on bicycles all of this begs
the question what would the streets of
our cities look like if our main
consultants were five-year-olds third
graders and teams of young design
students I think they’d be beautiful
they would certainly work better than
they’re working now and
importantly they would be safer than at
any single point in the last 60 years
I’ll tell you what’s old-fashioned than
standing in the way of progress and that
is engineering human streets and instead
of designing them but at the end of the
day this isn’t about bicycles and
infrastructure pedestrian facilities
urban planning urban design livable
cities I’ll tell you what this is it’s
bigger than all that this is about
erecting monuments monuments that we the
people design and erect monuments to
liveable cities to the past the present
and the all-important future monuments
that make cities better and monuments
that save lives instead of wiping them
out or destroying them if you think
about it we are the architects we are
the designers these are our cities this
isn’t the matrix I want to leave you
with this quote cities are erected on
spiritual columns like giant mirrors
they reflect the hearts of their
residents if those hearts darkened and
lose faith cities will lose their
glamour this is a nine hundred year old
quote more true today than ever before
and I ask you is this not the noblest of
goals working doing everything we can
and we know how to do it to make our
cities and our hearts shine I think that
we should just take this paradigm and
shift it back to where it belongs back
to the future I think we should let
these monuments to the future rise all
over the world and now you’re gonna clap
again but this time please don’t clap
for me clap for shining hearts and all
the lives that we can save in the cities
that we can make better thank