planted city

Gonna ride my bike til the break o’ dawn… 

A paragraph from the Atlantic Cities article, ‘How More Expensive Housing Can Actually Cost You Less’, which highlights the growing economic benefits of living in walkable/ “location efficient” neighborhoods.

The website for the ‘Housing and Transportation Affordability Index’ explains that:

People who live in location inefficient places are auto-dependent, have high transportation costs, and are more susceptible to fluctuations in gas prices. 

This trend is projected to only get stronger (e.g. here, here, and here) as gas prices rise in response to the “the end of the petroleum era.” 

(Graphic credit: The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index)

A quote from the New York Times article, ‘The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Fresh Bread’, which highlights the cycling culture in the Netherlands in search of lessons for building more robust cycling cultures in North American cities and towns.

(Photo credit: Amsterdamize)

From The National Post:

Following recent high-profile cycling deaths in Ontario, results of a poll suggest four in five Canadians think until more cyclists respect the rules of the road, they won’t be able to gain the respect of motorists.

“What Canadians are saying is that there needs to be more understanding between motorists and cyclists,” Ipsos Reid associate vice-president Sean Simpson said.

Simpson pointed to Europe as an example of co-operation because bicycles are more common and both parties are accustomed to each other on the road.

The poll’s results also indicated Canadians are vastly in favour of more bike lanes.

Findings of the poll, conducted by Ipsos Reid exclusively for Postmedia News and Global News, show four in five (or 81 per cent) of those surveyed think Canada’s cities don’t have enough lanes devoted to cyclists, while nearly three in four (73 per cent) feel cyclists are right for demanding more respect from drivers.

Simpson said ordinarily, when a large number of people support an issue, more of them will say they somewhat agree, instead of strongly agree. In the case of bike lanes, the situation is reversed, with 43 per cent strongly supporting additional bike lanes, and 38 per cent of respondents saying they somewhat support the proposal.

More than half of all university graduates surveyed said they strongly supported bike lanes, with another 34 per cent said they somewhat supported them. The results show that younger people are more likely to support bike-lane expansion, but only by a margin of five per cent.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Globe & Mail; infographic credit: Globe & Mail)

Sustainable Transportation: ‘How the Dutch Got Their Cycle Paths’

From Smart Planet:

The Netherlands is famous for many things — tulips, drug culture, the Hague — and its bicycle infrastructure should certainly be on that list. Its capital city, Amsterdam, is one of the top biking cities in Europe, with 600,000 bikes in a city of 750,000 people, many of the country’s roads have multiple bike-only lanes or paths, and policy requires that every shop have bicycle parking.

Many cities would like to install similar infrastructure to save money, protect cyclists, and encouraging the energy-efficient and healthful activity. But how did the Netherlands get there in the first place?

A short documentary, made by the Dutch Cycling embassy, highlights the history of Dutch cycling and is well worth a watch.

You’ll find more on the documentary here. If this is of interest you may also want to check out the New York Times article, ‘The Dutch Way - Bicycles and Bread’.

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

Copenhagen, Denmark is… ‘Cycle City’

From Al Jazeera:

Joyce Ohajah visits Copenhagen to see what it is like to travel in a city built for bicycles, and experience Bicycle Rush Hour, when more than 35,000 cyclists cross the Dronning Louises Bridge on what is the busiest bicycle street in the western world

Here are a few more shots I’ve taken around #Vancouver over the last few months. If you’d like to see any of ‘em larger just click on the picture you’d like to see.

Steven

P.S. I’d love to take a look at an album from around your town. I used the tag ‘#my town’ in case you’re interested in doing the same. 

Here’s shot accessing the 10th Ave Bikeway and one of Vancouver’s prettiest blocks, earlier this Fall. The heritage house lined route runs parallel to Broadway, one of the city’s main East-West corridors, and restricts car speed and access to a limited number of side streets along the route. The result is a safer commuting route for cyclists and fewer car-bike conflicts on Broadway. Click here to see how the route fits into the city’s overall bike network. 

P.S. You can check out more of my photos here. 

Bikes in the City: ‘On the Right Track’

From Vimeo:

Catherine Ciarlo, Transportation Policy Director in the Office of Mayor Sam Adams in Portland, Oregon, explains how cycle tracks and buffered bike lanes work.

‘Ai Weiwei Piles 1,200 Bikes On Top Of Each Other, For Dazzling Effect’

From FastCoDesign:

The humble bike has inspired artists ever since Marcel Duchamp put a bicycle wheel on top of a stool in 1913—even Picasso, during the bleakest period of World War II, used a pair of handlebars and a bike saddle to whimsically conjure the skull of a bull. The artist Ai Weiwei, who was detained in a secret location for 81 days by the Chinese government last summer, continues this tradition with a new exhibition in Taiwan.

As part of what the museum bills as the first large-scale solo exhibition of the artist’s work to be held in the Chinese world, Ai Weiwei’s most recent work, Forever Bicycles, installs 1,200 bicycles—some hanging from the ceiling, some standing upright on the floor—one behind the other. The bikes have no handlebars and no seats and instead use those parts of the frame to extend upward and outward to connect to other wheels and other frames, creating the illusion of a labyrinth-like space in a three-dimensional area.

Check out the rest of the article here.