Comments on Copenhagenize.com - Bicycle Culture by Design: Vintage Enlightenment and Despair

indeed, the city hall square is much better now th...

2012-01-26T23:00:18.578+01:00

indeed, the city hall square is much better now than then. i question the wisdom of having 6+ lanes of traffic carving the heart of the city in two and with speeds of 50 km/h.

cars... everywhere so many cars (not only in Copen...

2012-01-25T09:39:25.310+01:00

cars... everywhere so many cars (not only in Copenhagen)... this is how a huge change appeared and the streets are completely transformed an room for people and nature any more... there are days when I have the feeling that I can't breath

@Kevin C I think Mikael is talking more about the...

2012-01-22T17:51:25.455+01:00

@Kevin C I think Mikael is talking more about the road itself, and not the plaza space. I was definitely taken away by HC Andersen during my recent visit. It's an incredibly wide road yet very little space is allocated to cyclist. No wonder there are estimated 50-60,000 cars vs. only 20,000 cyclist. Some stretches of that boulevard don't even have a cycle track-cyclists have to merge into a "service road" and then merge back to a painted lane going towards city hall. Hopefully that will change, I don't know. But even if cycle track is built the entire stretch, there's still too many cars for it to be a pleasant commute.

The trams did occupy some of the plaza space. But there weren't 60,000 of them going at speeds the cars can go on HC Andersen. And unless something goes very wrong, trams typically stay in the rails. In your THEN link, there's still plenty of space for pedestrians to walk around or gather in-stay away from the rails and you shouldn't get run over by a tram! Cars are the problem.

Sheesh - you're getting more & more dogmat...

2012-01-22T16:41:39.332+01:00

Sheesh - you're getting more & more dogmatic by the day. The whole central plaza in front of City Hall didn't exist in 1907 either, so there's been improvements since 1907 too

See this pic from 1912, where tram traffic used up most of the space of what is now Radhuspladsen.
Then

Now:
crowd
plaza

Sadly this story is repeated in cities all over th...

2012-01-20T21:42:18.516+01:00

Sadly this story is repeated in cities all over the world! Charming old thoroughfares become mechanised hellholes. Here in Nice, the prime industry is tourism. Where is there 6 - 8 lanes of smog and noise? Right next to the beach!! When there's a break in the traffic you can hear the birds..

I think the Google Steetview needs to be backed up...

2012-01-20T11:19:33.257+01:00

I think the Google Steetview needs to be backed up a step or two. The Tivoli castle is still there and it should be appearing in the Streetview frame too.

fantastic toy, jason! just added it to the blogpos...

2012-01-20T09:25:40.979+01:00

fantastic toy, jason! just added it to the blogpost. thanks.

Mikael, I know we don't agree on everything bu...

2012-01-20T01:16:19.465+01:00

Mikael, I know we don't agree on everything but I will endorse your declaration of war on this thing.

BAM! http://www.whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll...

2012-01-20T00:15:31.225+01:00

BAM!

http://www.whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll/55.674789,12.569624/id/33724/info/sv/zoom/14/

It is such a shame modern cities don't leave s...

2012-01-19T23:21:08.103+01:00

It is such a shame modern cities don't leave space for people, just push them aside to make way for machines... where is the humanity?

Thankfully Portland hasn't done that with thei...

2012-01-19T23:17:32.703+01:00

Thankfully Portland hasn't done that with their normal city streets as much, there are none larger than 3 lanes that I can think of going through the center of the city, and none larger than 4 lanes (sometimes with a 5th turn lane) going through the close-in east side of the city. Some of those streets have quite high speed limits though, and there is one in particular, Burnside ST, which I sometimes have to wait several minutes to cross, because there is so much traffic, and there are only traffic signals about every 8-10 blocks.

However, we did build several freeways that cut through those parts of the city, effectively cutting off whole areas of the city, because now you have to go on specific streets to cross the freeway which are spaced far apart, and in one case, you have to go miles around to get to the other side. They act as physical and mental barriers, and of course, wiped out entire neighborhoods that were there before (without giving the residents at the time any choice in the matter).