Perhaps the most common theme on the
shareanidea.org.nz website (a council-run service for
collecting ideas on the rebuilding of central Christchurch) is the suggestion to dramatically improve the
city’s cycling infrastructure. Although only one submission actually mentions the word ’
Copenhagenize’, this would be the verb that many engineers would employ to describe the overall process of designing a cycle-friendly city.
If you haven’t come across it before, ‘Copenhagenize’ arises from an urban planning philosophy that was implemented in Copenhagen in order to promote the use of bicycles (and also walking) as a form of urban transportation. The success of this planning philosophy in C o p e n h a g e n has been astounding – with 36 per cent of its population now making their daily commute by bicycle.
The shareanidea.org.nz website only permits a maximum of 140 characters for each submission, which doesn’t allow a lot of room to explain why Copenhagenization might be a good idea. So I thought it might be worth giving a quick overview of the research on this topic.
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Hat Tip to Steve Bishop, The reformational Daily; and to David Haywood, Southerly.
-- Southerly / David Haywood intro materials posted by,
and semiotiocally-enhanced by Politicarp and EconoMix
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