Light Up Your Childhood

Mainstream brands get in on the bicycle market. Bike lights for kids. Hello Kitty or Bakugan. Personally, I'm holding out for Hanna Montana.

As seen in a supermarket near here.

Bike Share in Valéncia, Spain

Here's an advert for the bike share system in Valénica, Spain. It's called Valenbisi. 2750 bicycles in all, docked at 275 stations.

A short and sweet advert that is brimming with positive imagery. "Easy, inexpensive, fast" are the three words on one of the signposts. Perfect.

Via: Cycle Chic Valéncia.

Copenhagen's Bicycle Butlers - Park Illegally and get your chain oiled and tires pumped

Photo: Niels Ahlmann Olesen for Berlingske.dk / Urban.dk

The City of Copenhagen has been on a 'charm offensive' since April 2010. The goal is to get more people to use the bike racks around the city's Metro stations, instead of leaning them up against everything else.

Here's the simple trick. If you park your bicycle illegally, the City will move it over to the bike racks. Instead of finger-wagging, they will then oil your chain, pump your tires and leave a little note on your bicycle asking to kindly use the bike racks in the future.

How brilliant is that? And the great thing is that the initiative has worked.

"It's about getting people to stop parking their bicycles in areas that emergency service vehicles need to access if there is an incident at a Metro station", said Project Leader Poul Erik Kinimond, as his colleague Morten Schelbech oils a chain in the background. Twice a day they move bicycles at the city's largest Metro stations.

"We're been called "Bicycle Butlers". People really like what we do".

When the project started in April they were moving around 150 bicycles a day. Today that number has dropped to between 30 and 50.

"It's been a bigger success than I had expected. At the beginning I wasn't keen on rewarding people who parked illegally. The idea was to tackle the problem in a way that wouldn't make people angry because we moved their bicycles", sais Kinimond.

"But we haven't had one single person who was angry", added Morten Schelbech.

He doesn't think that people will begin to park illegally in order to get a free oil and air service.

"We can recognize the same bicycles that are parked illegally several days in a row. They don't get oil or air."

The "Bicycle Butler" project will continue until at least January, 2011.

Thanks to Rasmus, Lars and Charlotte for the link. Via: Berlingske.dk

Coca Cola on the Bicycle Bandwagon

Coca Cola, like an army of companies before them, have gotten on the bicycle bandwagon. The bicycle is hip, nostalgic, futuristic and oh so very now. Say what you like about Coca Cola, every bit of positive portrayal of Citizen Cyclists on wheels is welcome.

Via: Cyclelicious.

Great Minds Think A Bike

Just me playing around with poster designs. Prototypes for clients often lead to other bits and pieces.

Available as a poster here if you like. I'm not fussed either way.

Personal Emotional Mobility

On my trip to Melbourne I arrived on the Monday and was scheduled to give my talk on the Saturday. Felix and I were picked up at the airport, together with another chap who was also speaking at the State of Design Festival.

A car designer. Former head of design for BMW. His name is Chris Bangle. Charming and personable with great humour.

He gave his talk on the Tuesday at the BMW Edge venue at Federation Square. I was looking forward to hearing about car design - all design is interesting to me - and it was going to be interesting to hear how the automobile industry and its designers are tackling the needs and moods of this new century.

According to the State of Design programme's text about Bangle we would hear all about how:
"We are becoming more aware of ‘personal mobility’, the choice we make for moving around. However, Bangle perceives the need to consider ‘personal emotional mobility’ if we are to seriously tackle behaviour change and develop more sustainable mobility products. People have developed ‘emotional’ attachments to their modes of transport, so if we want change we need to provide new experiences that act equally as a catalyst for emotional connection and sustainable outcomes."

To say I was disappointed is an understatement. Sustainability and the environment were hardly mentioned.

What I did learn was this funky and fresh new catchphrase created by Bangle to describe the evolution of designing cars: Personal Emotional Mobility.

Wicked! Sounds lovely and hip and modern and this was the phrase around which Bangle's talk revolved. What does it mean? Well, um... it turns out it means that the car industry needs to rethink their design so that people can have a heightened emotional attachment to their cars. It's a catchphrase to describe the goal of getting people to buy more cars.

Bangle said one thing that stood out, bold black on white. He said that the number of 16-18 year olds in the US who aren't bothering getting their driving licences is growing fast. Cars register less on their radar. Then Bangle said it:

"We have to hook them back to the car."

That's what he said. Sitting in the audience it was remarkable to see how many people turned their heads to the person next to them with quizzical looks on their faces. Silently asking each other; "Did he just say that? Really?"

Here on Copenhagenize.com we highlight the numerous examples of the car industry backing itself into a corner and angling their advertising to attack the growing armada of Citzen Cyclists in an attempt to maintain their market share, as well as promoting bike helmets to scare people off of bikes. It was refreshing and depressing to hear those nine words.

Felix was busy with his Nintendo during the talk - fair enough when you're eight - but he did look up at one point and whisper to me, "Daddy... isn't it funny that he's talking about cars and you're here to talk about bicycles?" Well spotted, my boy.

In the car from the airport, just after we had met, Bangle and I discussed various aspects of our respective fields. Bangle asked me two questions in the course of the conversation. Did I think that bikes should be registered like cars. I said no, as I've written on this blog. He asked an interesting question about whether bikes are the top-end of pedestrian traffic or the bottom-end of car traffic. I replied that bikes were the top-end of pedestrian traffic. Cyclists move faster than pedestrians but are capable of pedestrian-like movement and spontenaity.

During his talk he referred to our conversation and added a bit of bike-bashing for good measure. He mentioned the top-end/bottom-end question and suggested that cyclists want to be both. Delivered with a crooked smile and roll of the eyes expression on his face. He also chucked out the line that "somebody has to pay for the roads". Something that the good people at the I Pay Road Tax website/org would have a field day with.

I approached him after the talk - we all went to the same restaurant - and mentioned this myth about 'paying for roads'. "Oh, I know..." was the reply. So he knew... but still chucked out the line to the audience.

At the restaurant that evening Felix made himself famous in Melbourne. He was drawing at the table, on yellow post it notes. He asked me how to spell 'bicycle' and I helped him, not knowing what he had planned. He tip-toed over to Chris and put a post-it note on his back. He had written, simply:

I ♥ Bicycles.

Chris took it with a laugh but a whole bunch of the people at the table fired off text messages about this innocent but effective eight year-old bicycle advocacy activism.

So. What is Personal Emotional Mobility? The car industry would love you to mutter "oooh, baby" as your hands caress the carefully chosen material on your steering wheel and "Oh yeah..." as you look down the elegant slope of your hood. They want to trigger emotional reactions in people. All while those people are incarcerated inside their vehicles - completely and utterly cut off from the society in which they live. Isolated and alienated.

It's no secret that the car industry has borrowed freely from the bicycle industry throughout the past century. No Henry Ford without Alexander Pope. No selling their products gorgeously without the massive success of early bicycle marketing. Et cetera.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm plucking this catchphrase of Personal Emotional Mobility from the clutches of the car industry and planting it firmly in the blossoming garden of urban cycling.

Because you know what the great thing about Personal Emotional Mobility is? It describes perfectly what the bicycle can offer the person who rides it. It is a brilliant description of what I, personally, get out of riding a bicycle in cities.

My personal and emotional attachment with the cityscape, as well as with my fellow citizens whether on bicycles or on foot, is intensified, heightened.

I interact with my urban landscape as I roll down the cycle tracks or streets of my own, or any other city. The bicycle is independent mobility and on it I am an integral, active and visible element in the city. Offering yet another human thread that strengthens the societal fabric.

Thank you, Bangle. Thank you BMW. Your desperate attempt to sell cars has given me the perfect phrase with which to describe the beauty of the bicycle in cities.

And you know what? We're changing the world for the second time around with our two and three-wheeled machines. Citius, altius, fortius.

Roll on.

Get Home Faster in Sydney

Gerry from Infodesign in Australia sent us this great - and visionary considering the situation in Australia - example of how Sydney is putting some thought and money into promoting A2Bism as a way to encourage cycling in the city.

Cycleways - To get us all home faster. More bikes. Less traffic.

Check out the Sydney Cycleways website to see examples of other rather interesting slogans in use for the campaign. All and all it looks like a refreshingly modern and progressive campaign. Far from the traditional bike advocacy stuff you see.

A great approach to sell the idea of infrastructure - and bicycle transport in general - to the broader - and sceptical - population.

The Car Industry Strikes Back Again Again - This Time With a New Angle

Citröen advert in Copenhagen last year.

Continuing on the Copenhagenize theme of how the car industry is rallying to counter the [re]boom of the bicycle as transport in our cities, here's a new angle from the French car giant Citröen.

Last week they filmed a car advert here in Copenhagen, for their new 2011 C4 model which, by all accounts will save the planet, plug the hole in the Gulf of Mexico and play with your puppies like a loving uncle with one hand whilst sowing organic beetroot seeds with the other.

The Citröen advert, however, will present a point of view that differs from the recent Car Industry Strikes Back efforts we've seen of late. From Audi, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagon, etc. Not to mention FIAT and Volvo continuing the car industry tradition of desperately trying to promote bicycle helmets in order to make bicycles look more dangerous than they are.

An earlier Audi advert attempted a similar angle, but Citröen seems to have shrugged and decided to show off their new four-wheeled environmental jewel in a whole new light.

With a budget the size of a medium-sized Danish feature film, they were allowed to have their wicked way with the city of Copenhagen. They were permitted to close off a lane of traffic on the major artery Åboulevarden and drive their car down the street. Here's the thing... there were over 100 extras on the payroll. Copenhageners on their bicycles. Including one guy who got $3000 to ride his BMX bike down some stairs. Not a bad rate.

Apparently the storyline involves a C4 driving down the street and a growing flock of cyclists fall into line to follow it. Citröen wanted to show off their car in a large city with a massive level of cycling so Copenhagen was the obvious choice. Danish production house Moland did the filming.

Simply, Citröen wanted to parade their car in a bicycle-friendly environment. Showing that their product can 'compete' with bicycles as transport. It's an interesting development. Sure, it's ridiculous - the car still pollutes and is still a killing machine that limits the development of liveable cities - but is this the car industry accepting the bicycle as an equal and worthy competitor?

Okay... grain of salt. Haven't seen the finished product yet. But I'll be back when I do.

ADDENDUM:

My friend Andreas took this shot of the shooting of the advert last week. A camera rig on a Nihola cargo bike with an elderly chap riding it. No idea who the girl is on the left with her oh so Asian napkin on her mouth. An extra? You don't see those napkin-like masks here in Copenhagen except on the odd Asian tourist.

Ironically, C4 is also the monogram of one of the most prolific and visionary Kings of Denmark, Christian the Fourth.

Via: Various text messages, word of mouths and NPInvestor.

Traffic Calming with Bicycle Parking

The City put in a traffic calming measure on this street next to Saint Hans Square in the Nørrebro neighbourhood.

It was a perfect opportunity to plant some bike racks on the raised curb sections. This area is a hotbed of bars, cafés and restaurants so both the narrowed street and the bike racks are fantastic details.

I also enjoy the symbolism of a car being forced to slow down and navigate past long rows of bicycles. It's like a sandwich.

Stat Attacks - Numbers as Weapons in Discouraging Cycling

There was a recent, symbolic raid on bicycles last week where the police went after our cycling citizens for fun and profit.

There was coverage on every news channel about the police handing out fines and in every broadcast and in every newspaper article one number was mentioned. 20,000 cyclists are admitted to hospital every year in Denmark. It had absolutely no context for the bike raid, but it was repeated again and again.

I was thinking about the affect heuristic in relation to how we should be promoting cycling. Wikipedia has a page about the affect heuristic but Eliezer Yudkowsky has a great article about it on the excellent Less Wrong blog - a 'community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality'.

As Yudkowsky puts it, "The affect heuristic is when subjective impressions of goodness/badness act as a heuristic - a source of fast, perceptual judgments. Pleasant and unpleasant feelings are central to human reasoning..." A paper I'm looking forward to getting my fingers on is The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making by Finucane, M. L., Alhakami, A., Slovic, P., Johnson, S. M. (2000)

The affect heuristic is in play more than ever in modern society, thanks to the regrettable development of The Culture of Fear. Not least here in Denmark.

The "20,000 cyclists admitted to hospital" isn't a number that a dozen journalists googled by coincedence. It's a number sent out in a press release so that journalists don't have to think for themselves. Not surprisingly, it's the Danish Road 'Safety' Council who controls the distribution of such statistics. They really should open a car dealership on the side.

Stats like that one have incredibly negative effects on risk perception. Over the past two years, the flow of negative stats has increased. The main problem is that if you have a leak of negativity, you should also have a plug. We need a plug here in Denmark. We need a counterweight to the car-centric flow of information. We need people to fight for cycling, because we're killing it off. That's what bicycle advocacy is all about.

Looking around the world at colleagues I've met there are many who work hard at plugging. Fietsersbond, the CTC in the UK and FUBICY in France spring to mind. Countering the negative press and destructive stats that filter out of other organisations. Cyclists up in the UK! Um, yes... but cycling is up so actually the number of accidents is down. Safety in numbers principle. Duh...

If you keep repeating something like "20,000 cyclists end up in the hospital every year", it starts to sink in that cycling is 'dangerous'. This is the affect heuristic at play in all the wrong ways.

In the press we never hear details about these emergency room visits. Many, if not most, are minor injuries to arms and legs. We don't hear whether or not most cyclists walk out of the emergency ward and ride home, which is quite likely. I recall a stat from Norway about how 90% of cyclists who visited a hospital were on their bike again within the week. An important detail to include, don't you think? Provides a rational balance to the shockhorror angle.

I was at the hospital last week, actually. Just for some tests. Got talking to the doctor who told me that she commutes by train from Odense - an hour and a half away from Copenhagen. I asked, innocently enough, if she had a bike parked at the Nørreport train station - which is a 10 minute ride from the national hospital.

No, no... she 'didn't dare cycle in Copenhagen'. I assured her that we live in one of the world's two safest countries to cycle in. She was interested to hear that but she's been affected - affect heuristic again - by the negative press cycling has had over the past two years.

The City's Bicycle Office knows that scaring people off of bikes doesn't do anyone any good. In an interview with a Toronto newspaper, Andreas Rohl, project manager for Copenhagen's cycling infrastructure, said "We try to never talk to the public about cycling safety. [...] We just feel if we start to talk publicly about safety, people will start to doubt if cycling is safe..."

This is apparently how the Road Safety Council 'sells cycling' in Denmark

Let's look at numbers. Danes cycle 30% less than they did in 1990. According to the brilliant research by Prof. Lars Bo Andersen at the University of Southern Denmark, if will still cycled those 30% we could save 1500 lives a year through the health benefits of cycling. We both spoke at a conference last year, actually, and I asked him about it. He said that the 1500 number is low. Way too low. I'm looking forward to seeing what number he comes up with.

Shouldn't this positive news about the health benefits of urban cycling be repeated constantly? Shouldn't stats like this be one of the plugs to stem the flow of car-centric information?

Let's look at the 20,000 number with layman's eyes.

According to the national statistics, 18% of Danes cycle each day.
There are 5,540,241 people in Denmark, according to the latest numbers from last month.

That means there are 997,243 people commuting to work or school each day. Let's be realistic but, at the same time, conservative. Let's make that number 1.3 million to include short trips by bike that never get counted in commuting stats. It's probably much higher.

So... 1,300,000 people use a bicycle each day.
20,000 are admitted to hospital for minor or major injuries.
That means that only 1.5% - probably lower - of our daily cyclists are unlucky enough to need medical assistance.

On the other hand, those 1.3 million people ride every day.
1.3 million people times 365 days = 47,450,000
20,000 hospital admittances is 0.042%.
Goodness... that looks good.

Which headline is most positive and likely to encourage people to cycle?

20,000 cyclists hospitalised each year!

or

Only 1.5% [or 0.042% if you like] of cyclists hospitalised each year! Most of them for minor injuries!

Traffic deaths are always tragic. No doubt about it. In Denmark every around 45-50 cyclists are killed in traffic accidents. Like everywhere else, the majority die in accidents with cars. Which is why we shouldn't ignore the bull.

Let's say 50 cyclists lose their lives each year.
Out of the same 1.3 million Danes.
That's 0.00384%.

Let's balance that with the fact that, according to the comprehensive research by Prof. Lars Bo Andersen, cyclists live seven years longer, are less ill whilst alive and enjoy a higher quality of life.

And I recall reading that BECAUSE we cycle so much we save 600 lives a year! That's AMAZING news! Where are the headlines?

"Cycling is safe!"
"Safety in numbers... get on your bike and make cycling safer!"
"600 lives saved every year by cycling!"
"Save your life! Ride a bike!"

Etcetera. Ad libitum.

There is much talk of risk per kilometre [or mile] travelled. This is probably the most car-centric twist on traffic statistics in history. I heard a year or so ago that this way to angle the stats was an invention of the car industry, but I've never been able to find out where it originated or when it was first brought into use. Which all makes it feel a bit like the mystery surrounding the invention of Cap-and-Trade C02 trading schemes by Enron and Goldman Sachs and Al Gore.

If risk per kilometre was worth anything, space travel would be the safest form of travel. However, after a quick google, I learned that 32 astro/cosmonauts have lost their lives, out of 517 people who have travelled in space. Not great odds. I'll stick to my bicycle. It takes me to the moon and back every day.

The whole point is that those of us who wish to promote cycling should focus most intensely on countering the attempts by others to brand cycling as dangerous. Including those who provide negative affect heuristic statistics.

It's promoting cycling, it's basic marketing.

We're not doing it good enough. It's madness.

Sushi and Bicycles - How Marketing Bicycle Culture Should be Easy

The Sushi Bicycle - Selling Sushi at Copenhagen Beaches

In a recent post - 'If You Want Cycle Transport, Make Cycle Transport Sexy' by Brian Glover - I delved briefly into a comparison between the journey of sushi from obscurity in the western world to being a mainstream culinary dish.

I still can't find the link to a study I read about a few years back that used the proliferation of sushi restaurants as a yardstick in research to determine how age affects peoples desire to try new things in life. Eating new foods, voting for different political parties, listening to new music.

But it got me thinking about sushi and comparing it to 'bicycle culture'. It's particularly relevant as I so often hear - either whilst speaking in other countries or here on this blog things like "you don't understand... we live in a different culture."

I don't buy that at all, which is why I focus on marketing, anthopology and the fact that the behaviour of homo sapiens - and changing that behaviour - is quite universal. Now, there are differences in marketing in different countries. Canon has a camera that is sold around the world. In Japan, they sell it as the Ixy [cutesy name], they sell it as Ixus in Europe [grand, like a Greek god] and the same camera is called Powershot on the American market.

Carmakers have always battled with finding names that cross borders. A name which sounds great in a dozen languages may flop in one other. Volkswagon discovered that their Sharan model didn't fly in the UK because the girl's name Sharon has negative associations with a 'certain kind of girl'.

The Mitsubishi Pajero is sold as the Shogun in the UK and as the Montero in Spanish-speaking countries and North America because pajero means wanker in Castilian Spanish. The Buick LaCrosse was sold as the Buick Allure in Canada, as la crosse means masturbation or swindling in Québécois slang. It's all called badge engineering.

The products are, however, all the same. They're still just selling cameras and cars to consumers. Cellphones, mobiles or handys all do the same thing.

How did something as bizarre [to the western palate] as sushi conquer the world? Raw fish on sticky rice served with a green, horseradishy paste and dipped in soya sauce? Now available at in Canadian prairie supermarkets and in Moscow cafés.

Surely, if something as bizarre as sushi can become mainstream by leaping across well-protected and fiercely defended culinary and cultural borders then there must be good odds for the bicycle's return to the urban landscape.

The bicycle is universal. I know many people who have never even tried sushi, but I don't know anyone who can't ride a bicycle. Even if they never ride one, they've learned it and enjoyed it.

A couple of generations ago, our families were eating the same, largely unchanged, cuisine as their ancestors. The bicycle, however, was not unfamiliar to them.

So what was sushi's journey to success and globalisation? Can we use the example in marketing mainstream bicycle culture?

Theodore C. Bestor wrote an article in Foreign Policy ten years ago called How Sushi Went Global.

Little mention of any Japanese food appeared in U.S. media until well after World War II. By the 1960s, articles on sushi began to show up in lifestyle magazines like Holiday and Sunset. But the recipes they suggested were canapŽs like cooked shrimp on caraway rye bread, rather than raw fish on rice.

A decade later, however, sushi was growing in popularity throughout North America, turning into a sign of class and educational standing. In 1972, the New York Times covered the opening of a sushi bar in the elite sanctum of New York's Harvard Club. Esquire explained the fare in an article titled "Wake up Little Sushi!" Restaurant reviewers guided readers to Manhattan's sushi scene, including innovators like Shalom Sushi, a kosher sushi bar in SoHo.

Japan's emergence on the global economic scene in the 1970s as the business destination du jour, coupled with a rejection of hearty, red-meat American fare in favor of healthy cuisine like rice, fish, and vegetables, and the appeal of the high-concept aesthetics of Japanese design all prepared the world for a sushi fad. And so, from an exotic, almost unpalatable ethnic specialty, then to haute cuisine of the most rarefied sort, sushi has become not just cool, but popular.

The painted window of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, coffee shop advertises "espresso, cappuccino, carrot juice, lasagna, and sushi." Mashed potatoes with wasabi (horseradish), sushi-ginger relish, and seared sashimi-grade tuna steaks show Japan's growing cultural influence on upscale nouvelle cuisine throughout North America, Europe, and Latin America. Sushi has even become the stuff of fashion, from "sushi" lip gloss, colored the deep red of raw tuna, to "wasabi" nail polish, a soft avocado green.

In Walter F. Carroll's paper SUSHI: Globalization through Food Culture: Towards a Study of Global Food Networks - (opens as .pdf) he writes about Sasha Issenbergs's book The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy, saying that:

"He suggests that there is much to admire in the worldwide sushi trade and argues that it shows that “'virtuous global commerce and food culture can exist'.

What makes that trade potentially virtuous for him is “on a new landscape of consumption, power is decentralized, and supply and demand are regulated not by moguls but by local ideas about value and taste”.

Carroll continues:

"From beginnings in the Little Tokyo section of the city in the 1950s, eventually “sushi had found its second home”. Although some types of sushi were available in Little Tokyo, sushi’s wave of popularity in Los Angeles came with the movement of Japanese managers and executives to the United States when the Japanese economy was thriving during the 1960s. Their expense accounts enabled them to enjoy the relatively expensive sushi in Los Angeles. It was at this point that nigiri and fish maki began to be available. This led to the launching of new sushi restaurants and the increasing visibility of the dish. Issenberg (2007), from whom I draw this account, also notes some of the barriers to the acceptance of sushi in the United States, noting that “while foreign flavors have long seeped into American foodways, sushi had unique challenges.

Unlike other “ethnic foods,” in America, sushi was not an inexpensive, neighborhood-based food. “In large part because of its celebrated aesthetics, Japanese food was always seen as fussy haute cuisine” and this slowed its acceptance."

Perhaps I got carried away there, but I found it interesting. Sushi conquered the world. Surely the bicycle's journey back to our cities and towns should be a piece of cake.

Sushi was 'trendy' in L.A. and then New York, where it stranded for a while - but didn't go away. The Theory of Diffusion of Innovations came into play. The Innovators took hold of sushi. It moved over to the Early Adopters and then the Early Majority. It's now been embraced by the Late Majority and, in the case of sushi, there are probably many Laggards who will never try it. Nevertheless, it's a success.

The bicycle is 'hot' again, all over the world. With a bit of luck, the trend won't fade and we will continue to sell urban cycling positively, in order to allow the bicycle to tango its way into the lives of the Early Majority. We're well on our way.

I can't wrap this up [in newspaper] without a fish metaphor. Johannes V. Jensen was a famous Danish writer. In his novel Gudrun, from 1935, he compares the cycling Copenhageners to schools of fish:

"If one is bumped by a car, the whole school is bumped. It's a nerve one has in the elbow, a flock function, which Copenhageners have learned so well that it is second nature".


Disclaimer: This post is about comparing sushi and bicycle relating to marketing and trends. It has nothing to do with overfishing, declining fish stocks, etc. I'll recommend my friend Taras' book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (Taras Grescoe 2008) on THAT subject.

And I'm probably never going to have the chance to blog this video of mine on a bicycle blog again, so here goes:

If You Want Cycle Transport, Make Cycle Transport Sexy by Brian Glover

Long-time reader Brian Glover sent me this article he has written in reponse to my recent post about Cycling Isn't Fun, It's Transport. I have no idea why on earth I'm publishing a critique of myself, but then again, it's Sunday late morning and I'm hungover, vulnerable and incapable of making balanced judgements. So here goes.

No, Cycling isn’t “Fun,” It’s Transport – But If You Want Cycle Transport, Make Cycle Transport Sexy.
Guest article by Brian Glover

Last week Mikael wrote the post Cycling Isn't Fun, It's Transport, taking on the U.S. cycle advocates – ever cheerful, ever wholesome, ever useless and ignored – who seem to assume that people will take up bicycles as transportation because it’s the right and moral thing to do. His answer: “/I don't give a shit... I want to get there quick./” And he’s absolutely right: anyone who thinks mainstream people are motivated by ethics and altruism, in the U.S.A. or anywhere else, should come talk to me about some amazing Florida real estate. He’s right to say that people will choose the bike over the car only when it’s the fastest, most convenient, most direct way to get where they want to go. Cities should rebuild their streets to make that a reality.

And yet... I think Mikael is being more than a little disingenuous here. For several years now, he’s been telling us to “Copenhagenize the Planet,” and a surprising number of people seem to think that’s a good idea. I’m one of them.

Yes, we like those bike paths. Yes, we love those little railings for cyclists to grab at stoplights. The infrastructure of Copenhagen is efficient and practical, and Mikael photographs it alluringly. Really, though, “Copenhagenize” is not selling asphalt and blue paint; it’s selling style.

For people in “developing bicycle cultures,” Mikael offers an alluring ideal, which often involves attractive women (and men) in tasteful clothes, undoubtedly on their way from fabulous apartments to up-to-the-minute offices or chic restaurants and bars, all of which we can imagine filled with well-designed Danish furniture. For a lot of people, this will look like the good life, or at least one version of the good life.

But here’s the problem: for a lot of people in my “developing cycling culture,” the Copenhagenize fantasy does not look like the good life. In San Francisco, New York, Portland, and a few other cities, sure, people are likely to agree. In those few places, Americans really aren’t too different from their urban European counterparts. They want the same things, more or less, and follow the same styles (again, more or less).

Mikael’s graphic design aesthetic, for instance, rides hard on Helvetica (see “American Apparel”) and faux-hand-stenciling (see “Every Indie Band Ever, Pretty Much”). If I were selling stuff to the average 30-something yuppie in Brooklyn (or the people who love him/her), I’d do exactly what he’s doing. But the vast majority of Americans don’t find that lifestyle or its signifiers appealing. It’s not just true that most Americans live in automobile-dependent suburbs; they /like/ living in automobile-dependent suburbs. Even when cycling clearly is the fastest, most convenient way to get somewhere, they won’t do it, and they’ll look with disdain on anyone who does. From inside the head of a person in a developing cycle culture, Mikael’s photos look very different. He wants us to see freedom, convenience, and status appeal; here in the States, his audience is likely to see something that’s not just weird, but threatening. I can’t speak for other non-cycling nations, but I suspect that a lot of the same principles apply. Let me explain.

In any culture – as far as marketing is concerned – what matters is status. People will buy things if they think they’ll get approval and envy from the people around them. In mainstream U.S. culture, driving a car in a city that has been designed only for driving cars is a high-status activity. It implies that you have a lot of private property (power, wealth, respect) and that you don’t have to enter into public, shared spaces (vulnerability, poverty, disrespect).

In the worldview through which most Americans understand their lives, a car is an extension of the suburban home: independent, private, isolated. And in that worldview, isolation is a good thing. In this world, apartments are bad. Urban life as Mikael presents it is bad. Interactions with strangers are bad. We need protection from strangers, and a mobile steel-and-glass box – the bigger, the better – is the best way to get that protection.

Transportation biking, then, is a low-status activity – a /very/ low-status activity. That’s why the original survey that got Mikael all steamed up is so ridiculous; it asked

“Why do you choose to bicycle to work?,”

but it should really have asked

“Why do you choose to do something that, in the eyes of 95% of your society, marks you as a freak and a loser?”

No one will say this out loud, of course – it’s not polite – but it’s the truth. And no one will answer this question honestly, either, but if they did, the choices would look like this:

A. I am too poor to get around in any other way. I have no choice. I
am abject.

B. I have had my rights as a citizen stripped from me because of
repeated, unforgivably bad behavior (i.e. drunk driving
convictions). I am an outcast and a pariah.

C. I think most mainstream people are idiots, and I actively seek
out their disapproval. I am a rebel. If the majority of people
around me start biking, I’ll hate that too.

D. I genuinely don’t care what other people think of me. I am an
independent thinker. I also have enough job security and social
status that I can afford not to care what other people think of me.
I am either uncommonly strong, or uncommonly privileged.

(As for me, I’m a combination of C and D. I hope.)

When a mainstream American sees a person on a bike (without the signifiers of cycling as a sport – an entirely different thing, status-wise), he or she sees one of those four categories, and none of them look appealing. The poor (A) provoke either pity (Democrats) or disdain (Republicans). The other three categories are actually threats – whether through degeneracy (B), subversion (C), or class oppression (D). Urban Europeans will generally provoke the same reactions, even when they’re not on bikes – so Mikael’s plan to “Copenhagenize the Planet” probably won’t get far here, without some major revisions.

What, then, is to be done? I do think it’s possible to market cycling to the mainstream here in the U.S., and in developing cycling cultures around the world. But the way to make that happen is to tie cycling to high-status lifestyles in specific local cultures. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Though it may trouble Mikael to admit it, “Denmark” is not a magic word for everyone. So, advocates and marketers need to look at what people really want; to be crude about it, they should market cycling in ways that, for the mainstream of a given local culture, just might get you laid. What we need is a new model of cool/smart/sexy/desirable, a lifestyle model that is indigenous to the local culture but incorporates many of the underlying elements we see in places like Copenhagen.

I live in North Carolina – and not in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, or Asheville, but pretty deep in the conservative “red-state” area. Here in Greenville, the current model of the good life includes a big suburban-style house, a really big SUV, a significant dose of evangelical Christianity and a lot of college football. This may not appeal to readers from other parts of the world, but that’s the point: local culture does matter.

But even here, and in much of the South, I can see possibilities. For instance, I think a "Charleston" approach would appeal to quite a lot of people -- blonde sorority girls on updated beach cruisers, tailgate parties with kegs and dogs (arriving by bike trailer), couples who look like George W. and Laura Bush (or even better, Cindy McCain) pulling up on expensive city bikes to big ol' Victorian houses in dense, Spanish-moss-draped neighborhoods right out of Southern Living. Ladies who lunch, pedaling stylishly in pastels to an azalea-shrouded church that isn’t an exurban megacomplex. Maybe even U.S. military dudes in uniform, riding European bikes in a German city (sorry, Denmark – we’ve got more bases there). People do have some positive mental frames for urban lifestyles in this region, but they’re a little bit submerged right now; it’s time to go out and activate them.

Wherever you live, though, the point is to determine who the high-status people are. They're the ones you need to reach, and they’re the ones you need to co-opt. Others will aspire to follow them. Once cycling becomes a high-status activity, people will do it even where the actual road infrastructure isn’t very friendly – just as they now refuse to do it, even where the roads are pretty good. Like every culture, bicycle culture is all in your head.
by Brian Glover, May 2010

Copenhagenize replies:
Firstly, thanks to Brian for taking the time to write this article and to send it to me.
I won't get into details, but I'll add a couple of comments.

1. I am so-o-o-o-o going to change the Copenhagenize.com banner graphic.
2. Changing the status of cycling is really the foundation of what I try to do. It is the cornerstone of the Cycle Chic concept, of which Copenhagenize is an extension. Why has Cycle Chic rolled out around the world over the past three and a half years? It presents images, not only from Copenhagen but around the world, of cycling in a different light. Of cycling how it used to be. The world was ready for this, apparently. The first photo I took was recently called The Photo That Launched a Million Bicycles, which is a wild, humbling tagline, but the status of cycling has changed and continues to change. All over the world.

Not only in the large cities, but in Charleston, in Flagstaff, Georgia, Sacramento, on the Change Your Life, Ride a Bike website - and beyond. Lodz, Poland. Bandung, Indonesia. And so on. And so on.

Changing the social status of cycling - of ANYTHING - cannot possibly begin in areas outside of large, urban centres. It's a fact of life that First Movers live in Big Cities and that the ideas they adopt, if successful, filter down to the rest of society.

The Law of Diffusion of Innovation highlights how we are all divided up into five groups; Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.

Cycle Chic - to use an phrase that highlights the marketing of urban cycling - has been wildly successful at targeting Innovators and Early Adopters all over the planet and we are moving steadily towards Early Majority in many regions. In this context, the Innovators are not cycling enthusiasts and/or advocates but rather Citizen Cyclists taking to the streets. People who have elegantly leapt over traditional advocacy and the outdated and ineffective messages associated with this advocacy.

3. My use of Helvetica and my graphic design aesthetics are aimed at Innovators and Early Adopters and not at the 'heartland', whether in the US or France or anywhere else. The wheels start turning in the cities and, with luck and hard work, the momentum will be achieved and filter down. The people who read Southern Living do not read this blog, for example. On Copenhagenize.com the readership is, very roughly, traffic planners, urban planners, bicycle advocates. A more focused group. I speak to this group, not to their neighbours across the street. But by speaking to the 2000-odd daily readers on Copenhagenize.com, perhaps the ideas that people think are good will spread on the tailwinds.

Most readers of Cycle Chic probably don't read Southern Living either, to be honest. But they are certainly closer to the trend pulse. On the Cycle Chic facebook group, the members are 53% women and 43% men [the remaining 4% are companies/orgs etc] and this is the same on the blog. Most are interested in fashion/lifestyle/design/urban living.


Matthew Broderik on a bicycle.

These are the people to whom urban cycling must be sold, and sold differently. Seeing fashionistas and celebrities on bicycles, seeing major fashion brands using bicycles in their adverts... all this is good. Whether the purists like it or not. This is a repeat of the bicycle boom in the 1890's where urban cycling went mainstream and transformed our societies. Individual mobility, liberation of the working classes and of women. All through a simple product with an excellent design but also through positive marketing.

Something's Fishy
I remember a fantastically interesting study about sushi. About how a team of researchers used the spread of sushi restaurants throughout America as a yardstick to determine how people in different age groups react to trends and at what age they start getting 'stuck in their ways' and start to refuse trying new things, foods, ideas.

I can't for the life of me find the link, but selling urban cycling and mainstream bicycle culture is much the same as sushi's global march. There are now sushi bars in the strangest places. Deep in heartlands where massive steaks once ruled supreme there are now places selling tiny bits of raw fish on sticky rice.

The advantage that urban cycling enjoys over sushi is that it has already gone global - over a century ago. It in public domain and not restricted to one foreign culture. Very few people have to learn to ride a bike - they've done that. Learning to eat - and enjoy - raw fish from a foreign culture is a considerably greater challenge.

I don't actually feel that I'm selling "Danish bicycle culture". I merely show what is possible in a large city - and one with the third-largest urban sprawl in Europe. I don't really know or care what 'Copenhagenizing the Planet' means. It's just a way of expressing possibilities, encouraging a change of thinking, highlighting how the bicycle is one of the key elements in the [re]creation of liveable cities.

But the words 'copenhagenize' dates to the beginning of the 19th century and originates in America. :-) It features in the splendidly named "Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States - By the Best American and European Writers" from 1899. It's a naval military phrase that refers to the practice of the British Navy to confiscate all the ships of a defeated adversary, as they did with the Danish Navy following the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807.

"But, even when it was repealed in 1809, the belief that Great Britain would "Copenhagenize" any American navy which might be formed was sufficient to deter the democratic leaders from anything bolder than non-intercourse laws, until the idea of invading Canada took root and blossomed into a declaration of war."

Which has nothing to with bicycles, but hey, at least it's in a CYCLOpædia...

But I digress... which is a good sign that I should shut up. Thanks again, Brian, for the chat.

Paving the Way for Cyclists

This scaffolding platform appeared across the street one day last week. It was constructed for a camera crane - the long thing on top - for filming a scene from a drama series for Danish Broadcasting. It took all night to erect, it was used for a few hours and then took ages to dismantle.

It's an interesting example of how the bike lanes have priority here. This stretch of bike lane is medium-sized, with about 10,000 cyclists in each direction each day. Blocking the bike lanes on main thoroughfares is out of the question. The platform allows for free access for cyclists. Usually the sidewalks must also be kept free. In this rare case, the pedestrians have to share the bike lane for a few metres, but it's only for one day.

Generally, when you have construction work you must keep the lanes clear, as illustrated in the photo, above. Cables are led over the lane and nothing, as a rule, restricts the smooth flow on the pavement.


In this example, construction forced the closure of the sidewalk and bike lane. Pedestrians had to cross to the other side of the street, but space was made for a temporary bike lane on this side, due to the volume of traffic.


Go with the flow. And keep the flow going.
Even temporary signs for car traffic, annoucing street closures, straddle the bike lane.

More Health Warnings

Photo via KingDumb on Flickr.

A stencil after my own heart. From the brilliant Urban Repair Squad blog. They highlight some great initiatives from around the world.

I've whipped up some health warning stickers if anyone is interested in either buying them or printing out the .png file themselves. They're inspired by my Ignoring the Sacred Bull blogpost from a while back.



Let's face it. If we start spreading the word that driving - while a necessary part of our societies - is not everything it's cracked up to be, we'll be turning a whole lot of people onto cycling and public transport. Bad thing? Nah.

Give Us a Shout

The City of Copenhagen's Technical & Environmental Administration (what other people refer to as Dept. of Transport) has launched a new website called 'Giv et praj', or 'Give Us a Shout' in English, wherein citizens can make the city aware of various issues on the urban landscape. The City will then endevour to fix the problem and you can also track the progress on the website. How cool is THAT?!

There are various categories and, surprise surprise, cyclists are one of the main ones. The city encourages cyclists to report:

- Uneven asphalt, holes or bumps on the bike lanes
- Curbs without ramps for cyclists
- Intersections without a turn lane for cyclists
- Cycling shortcuts that can be improved with a bit of asphalt.
- Missing bicycle symbols on the asphalt.
- Places that could use bicycle-friendly signage.

In addition you can give the city a shout out about:
- Bikes that are taking up space
- Good cycling ideas
- Missing lane markings for cyclists
- Unnecessary hindrances

On the website you can enter the address or place it on an interactive map, as well as upload a photo of your shout out if you have one. You can also see all the other shout outs from your fellow citizens on the map.

The website is for everyone, not just those of us who cycle. There are also categories like garbage issues, animals (dead animals and rats), grafitti, lighting, parking, signage, trees and bushes and roads.

The Giv et praj website is in Danish, but it's still lovely. Isn't this how living in cities should be? Citizens interacting with the administration and having a concrete and positive effect on the daily life of the metropolis.

The Oh so Efficient Bicycle

Iain Boal's now famous chart of transport/motion effciency.

The Green Machine.

Cycling Isn't 'Fun', It's Transport

Richard at Cyclelicio.us blogged this yesterday. It's an online survey from a group called Ecology Action in the US about bicycle commuting.

Right off the bat I agreed with Richard about the fact that the first four reasons are silly and out of touch with basic anthropology. The most important reason of all was left out.

Richard, however, claimed that the most important reason was that it was 'fun'. I got off the bus at that point.

I don't ride a bicycle all over the map because it's fun. I don't think I've ever considered it fun. Enjoyable, perhaps, but even that isn't at the top of the list.

Frisbees are fun. That's why hundreds of millions of them have been sold since Walter Frederick Morrison concieved his flying disk. But there are very, very few people who think that it's so much fun that they want to join a league and do it full time.

When the City of Copenhagen asks its cycling citizens what their main reason for cycling is - and they ask every two years - the majority reply that it is because a bicycle is the quickest and easiest way to get around town. 56% of them say that.

In second place, 19% reply that their main reason is 'good exercise'. They get their 30 minutes a day like the Ministry of Health suggests but riding to and from work and on to the supermarket.

Only 6% ride because it's inexpensive and only 1% ride for environmental reasons.

I agree with Richard when he writes, "No wonder we fail so miserably at cycling promotion. Do car advertisements speak blandly to the raw number crunching, analytical bottom line? Or do they appeal to your desire for visceral, go fast, fantastic feeling of freedom and sexual prowess?"

Cycling advocacy is hopelessly out of touch with basic human anthropology. It doesn't trigger anything universal in it's marketing. If we want large numbers of citizens to choose the bicycle, the main way to do that is what I call A2Bism. It's goal number one in my Four Goals for Promoting Urban Cycling lecture that I travel around with.

People on bicycles are no different than people on foot, on trains, planes and automobiles. They want to get there quick. Homo sapiens are like rivers - we'll always take the quickest route.

People in established bicycle cultures ride because it's quick. Easy. Convenient. If you make that possible in emerging bicycle cultures, you have half the battle won. Sure, it requires safe, separated infrastructure to gain access to the goldmine of societal benefits associated with high levels of urban cycling.

On the Ecology Action - Bike2Work site that hosted that poll I found this:
Why Bike Commute?
- Its good for your health. (I don't give a shit... I want to get there quick)
- Saves you money on gasoline, vehicle maintenance, parking fees and parking tickets. (I don't give a shit... I want to get there quick)
- Reduces air, water and noise pollution associated with driving. (I don't give a shit... I want to get there quick)
- Reduces automobile traffic. (I don't give a shit... I want to get there quick... although fewer cars might be nice...)
- Its good for the community by making our streets safer, quieter, and cleaner. (Yeah, yeah, sounds nice... but I still just want to get there quick.)

"Once you discover the freedom, convenience, and fitness benefits of biking to work, you'll wonder why you didn't start riding sooner. Bicycling can be a convenient, dependable, and virtually free mode of transportation. And bicycling burns about 500 calories an hour, so you can commute and stay fit at the same time."

From a marketing perspective this is really dreadful copy. This isn't selling anything, let alone cycling. And yet this is the standard fare on so many 'advocacy' websites all over the world.

After the above paragraph on the website was this...

Before You Ride - Helmets
Always wear a helmet - it may save your life.

All that harping on about the 'benefits' followed by the 'it could kill you' bullshit and the standard propaganda spiel about 'helmets saving lives'. You'd think people would have learned by now, from all the data and experience, that promoting helmets kills off cycling.

Whatever. This isn't about this one little website. It's much more general than that. If you want to continue marginalizing urban cycling, then by all means keep banging on your drum chanting those most failed rallying cries; "It's green!", "It's healthy", "It's cheap!", "It's carbon neutral!" Blah Blah Blah. All you'll be doing is continuing the long, sad tradition of the Greatest Marketing Fiasco in History: Environmentalism.

Think about it. Forty years of noisy awarness and activism. Millions (billions?) of dollars donated to thousands of organisations and spent on 'projects' and what do we have to show for it? The vast majority of our citizens are not 'converts'. They don't wear organic sweaters knitted from the wool of their free-range sheep while gardening biodynamic beetroot in the light of the full moon. They can't even be bothered to turn off their computer at night. Or buy water-saving toilets. Or take the bus one day a week.

Bicycle advocacy, as it is now in so many regions, is the bastard child of the pathetically ineffective environmental marketing of past four decades. There are so few people who have the Know Why - not to be confused with Know How.

Why did the bicycle explode onto the urban landscape all over the world 130 years ago? Merely because it was 'fun'? No. Sure, there was a niche group of rich white boys who first embraced the velocipede and the penny farthing as playthings. They had 'fun' with their expensive machines.

When the Safety bicycle was invented, however, the bicycle went mainstream. Every corner of society embraced it. It was all about mobility and effective transport. It was A2Bism. Sure, it liberated the working classes and women and no other transport form has transformed society so quickly and so effectively as the bicycle. But the workers could merely extend their mobility radius in their search for work. Women could get from A to B without being dependent on their husbands. And so on. And so on.

The bicycle went mainstream because it was quick and easy.

Bicycle advocacy needs to start applying basic marketing principles to this amazing product if we want it to go mainstream again. In the big picture, all we're doing now is getting small numbers to go for 'bike rides' on the weekends - families if we're lucky - and a few more adrenaline-driven men to take to the roads. We're selling frisbees. Whee. Oooh, but remember your plastic safety hat!

100 years ago 20% of all trips in Los Angeles were by bicycle. Now, according to this CNN article, About 27 percent of adults in the United States bike at least once a summer, according to a survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

This isn't just about one country. It's a global thing. We're doing so little right in the battle for behavourial transport change and urban mobility - and in an age where the population is ripe for it. It's now. And yet we're missing the point.

If we did stuff purely because it was 'fun' we'd all be living in condos in Spain or Florida playing beach volleyball and drinking daquiris until we died. I use a bicycle because it's quick. I enjoy it quite often. I know it's healthy. But those are just tag-a-long benefits, not primary reasons.

Make the bicycle the quickest way to get around a city or town. THAT'S what people want. THAT'S what will make them choose the bicycle. THAT'S how we will mainstream urban cycling and work effectively towards liveable cities, healthier populations and The Common Good.

Addendum:
That was actually that but then I saw this on the website...

They photoshopped a helmet onto EINSTEIN! That's just sick. The man was a SCIENTIST. Show some respect for SCIENCE. Interestingly, the European Cyclist's Federation's new Scientists for Cycling group use the same photo of Albert. Without a helmet, not surprisingly.

Driving Without Dying - Helmets for Motorists

It's no secret that we're big fans of helmet campaigns for motorists. It would do wonders for reducing car traffic and encouraging people to ride bicycles.

We've previously blogged about the first Motoring Helmet, developed in Australia in the late 1980's. Later we covered the Protective Headbands for Motorists developed at the University of Adelaide on the background of an Australian government study that showed that many lives could be saved and serious injuries reduced if car occupants wore helmets or similar devices. We added a blogpost about the headbands here.

A few days ago, our colleague, Chris from Britain's CTC, sent us the link to Driving Without Dying. It's a Canadian website called Driving Without Dying by a man named Jack who says,

"There are giant gaps in highway safety that need to be filled. My legacy to humanity is to change the driving habits of the entire world and I don't care how long it takes."

The man sounds committed. Check out his website. You can even translate his 10 Reasons to Consider Wearing a Helmet While in Your Car into other languages and send them in.

In addition, this chap also has www.SafetyTuque.com - 'tuque' being a Canadianism for ski hat. He argues that you should acquire one because, among other things, "Crossing busy streets and falling on icy sidewalks are commonplace dangers for everyone when the snow is flying." Not to mention "Falling ice and snow off large buildings have been known to strike many unsuspecting pedestrians."

"If helmets should be mandatory anywhere it's inside cars. Driving is the only thing most of us do that's really dangerous, with almost 50,000 deaths a year in North America. Going for a drive is like going to war - and we should probably wear combat helmets - especially teenagers". Josh Freed, The Gazette, Montreal, 17 February 2007.

What do you think? Is Jack on the right track? The only reason that the two Australian motoring helmets never made any real impact is that the automobile industry wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. It would be a catastrophe for sales if we started telling people that driving is dangerous. 1.2 million deaths a year and many more injuries. Goodness, no. That's bad marketing.

Should the bicycle crowd back Jack's quest?



We've had a poll running for a while here on Copenhagenize.com. It got buried in older posts, but's lets keep it running.

Cop Doing the Right Thing

Spotted outside my flat. A motorcycle cop ticketing a motorist for something. All while a Copenhagener cycles gracefully past.

Bicycles and Bragging Rights

Thanks to our reader, Ken, for this advert from Batavus, the Dutch bike brand. He sent a link to David Hembrow's blogpost about the advert and the bestselling bikes in the Netherlands.

And David translated the throaty sounds emitting from the characters as this:

The first guy says "Hey neighbour, ESP, ABS, fog lamps, 16 inch rims and 6 gears."

The second guy says "28 inch rims, 8 gears, high power lights and computer integrated in the steering. My wife and daughter have the same."

We get our marketing priorities right in established bicycle cultures. :-)


And while in the Netherlands, the policewoman in the previous post would probably just start shooting if she saw this roll past the school in the morning.
From the always excellent photo website by Thomas Schlijper.