Bicycle Urbanism - Back to the Future City

Since the academic year 2013/14 a lecture series on "Cycling in the City" is being curated by the Research Center of Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering at Vienna University of Technology. This year we have been invited to share Smarter Than Car's viewpoint on Bicycle Urbanism. Watch the video here:

The talk will take place Monday 28th April at 6 PM at Vienna University of Technology. There will be live streaming within the university and the video recording of the talk will be put on line later, also within this post. ;) Looking forward to interacting with many interested students in Vienna!

the vello foldable bicycle test.

Smarter Than Car - An Open-source Bicycle Urbanism Think Tank

We are gladly launching Smarter Than Car as a Think Tank engaged with questions of Bicycle Urbanism and Future Urban Mobility.

See our new beautiful website:

As an open-source Think Tank we reagulary host events bringing together people to discuss ideas and brew up projects. We are also preparing some projects for the upcoming months so keep an eye out on the new website. I will also keep some updates on flolo.org.

Talk "The Promise of Bicycle Urbanism" @ TEDx Vienna - The City 2.0

I recently gave a talk at the TEDx Vienna City 2.0 event. Running through this process and meeting the inspiring team and other speakers made me learn a lot. Thanks to everybody who supported me in preparing the talk and of course to the whole team at Smarter Than Car! :)

Here is the video.

"The mainstreamed bicycle as a tool for creating future cities is just starting to take-off. Can we imagine a city where the benchmark for successful urban development is how we are able to use pedal-powered vehicles?
The idea of such a bicycle urbanism is what Florian is working on with the Chinese-Austrian NGO Smarter Than Car. He will make you understand why the bicycle is the most effective way to restructure our cities to become fit for future urban challenges.
Florian explains why he believes that the bicycle is still massively under-explored in contemporary urban planning and administration. He shows examples of what we can learn from bicycle cultural exchange with a city like Beijing to re-think our cities along the lines of pop-up urbanism on two or three wheels."

A Day with The DJ Trike in Vancouver

Urban life can be rewarding and full of surprises. While staying in Vancouver, Canada this June to present the work of Smarter Than Car at Velo-city 2012, I had such a spontaneous urban encounter which demonstrated the power of (bi)cycles as urban tools to (temporarily) program sustainably functioning and culturally active urban landscapes animated by pedal-powered vehicles.

The day after the Velo-city 2012 conference all the stress was gone, participants had cheerfully wrapped up the conference and could still enjoy one day roaming around the city on their BiXi bikes provided to pedal-power Velo-city participants in Vancouver. So I left my hotel with this indestructible bicycle turning towards downtown Vancouver on Burrard street and; What?! I see a Chinese tricycle (sunlunche) on the sidewalk, adapted with a white box to be usable as a mobile DJ console. Very quickly it dawned on me that this must be Jonathan Igharas, a designer from Vancouver who creates (amongst others) cycles as adapted urban tools and who obviously was about to have a good time with one of his creations: The DJ Trike. 

With the work of Smarter Than Car we had previously even quoted The DJ Trike as an example of an autonomous urban infrastructure which is able to exploit the advantages of pedal-powered vehicles for cultural events in public space. What we found interesting back then was that The DJ Trike interpreted the diverse Chinese cargo bike (sunlunche) culture in a modern and beautifully designed way, whereas in China the multitude of cargo cycles appeared as backward and from the past (read more about it in this article by Smarter Than Car). 

As Jonathan Igharas puts it on his site, the DJ Trike is “a vehicle and platform for urban communication and interaction, as well a method to transcend common perceptions associated with current pedal powered transportation.” 

In this post I want to give you impressions of the urban play session which Jonathan Igharas lately performed for a wedding and which I was able to witness. This was not the ‘typical’ urban play session which the collective Labour of Love is performing with the DJ Trike, but showed the flexibility of pedal-powered vehicles when they are used as autonomous cultural devices at spontaneous (urban) events. The awe of people who just left the church being confronted with the DJ Trike playing love songs on the sidewalk of Burrard street was not to miss and showed that great cities need more culturally productive pedal-powered vehicles in operation. 

In this sense I want to wish Jonathan and the Labour of Love soundsystem all the best for their future endeavours! To keep updated on the DJ Trike please refer to the DJ Trike’s facebook or twitter and the facebook page of the Labour of Love Soundsystem.

The DJ Trike's home: Chinatown in Vancouver.

The DJ Trike has just been recovered (via social media) from being stolen and therefore the branding had to be renewed.

The Labour of Love soundsystem crew; Jonathan Igharas and Tobias Ottahal.

Serk Space Beijing

SERK – a new hybrid space – bar / cafe / bike shop south of Lama Temple in Beijing opened June first. Since speaking to Shannon Bufton and Liman Zhao (founders of SERK) about their latest project for the first time, I am curious to see SERK space evolving as a place for new cycling cultures in Beijing (and the World). The hybrid space between bar/cafe and bike shop was inserted into Beijing's inner Hutong districts as a space for catalytic exchange between traditional and modern cycling cultures in Beijing. It provides manifold potentials for enriching Beijing's cycling cultures and is a great leap forward to making cycling sexy (again) in Beijing. For the work of Smarter Than Car this new space will allow for new kind of advocacy work as SERK space enhances bicycle cultural diversity in Beijing (bicycle mainstreaming) and creates a physical space communicating a cycling lifestyle to the urban context of Beijing (bicycle urbanism).  

The founders of SERK – Beijinger Liman Zhao and Australian Shannon Bufton – have been working hard over the past 2 years to promote cycling culture in Beijing. They co-founded Smarter Than Car, Beijing Bike Week and have undertaken research on Beijing’s bicycle cultures which has been presented around the world. The SERK space represents a focal point for their activities and a meeting place for those interested in bicycles and in reinvigorating the two-wheeled culture of the former bicycle kingdom, Beijing. The space was set up as melting pot of ideas for bicycle cultural exchange between East and West. The SERK space is an architectural insertion into a traditional Hutong still flourishing with two-wheeled culture. It’s open at the front and invites the passerby to engage with the concept and think about the bicycle in a new light. Thereby the SERK space becomes much more than a traditional bicycle shop, bar or cafe. It is a place of exchange, wonder, learning and promotion of a newly invigorating bicycle culture in Beijing.

And here some images taken during the opening night. The space is looking very vibrant on the inside and it appears that the people in the street are really attracted by this stylish new bicycle culture radiating outwards from the SERK space.

 

 

 

Critical Mass Vienna

 

May's Critical Mass (CM) in Vienna was super-well handled in a shared effort between CM team and  police. Cycling and motorcycling police flanked the flow of about 1000 bicycles (some say 900) in front, rear and back, alleviating some usually occurring stress created by impatient car drivers wanting to push in from side streets.Of course, a stronger police presence (and support) implies safety for CM participants, but as well "controls" the CM's self-organizing dynamics. In any case; it was nice to see motorcycling police on sidewalks being replaced by cycling police on sidewalks (and tramways), and - since some small incidents during this March's CM - I would interpret a good police presence as a sign that an increasingly large CM in Vienna needs to be protected by police from negative (re)actions of car drivers. ;) 

Anyway. May's CM was blessed by blue skies and magnificent light. There were musicians on cargo bikes heading the CM and in general a super-eased atmosphere. I still don't understand why so many people in Vienna have not yet participated in a CM!? Bring at least one person new to CM each time you participate in future!

Images below show you some typical CM situations; front and back with police presence; blocking of side traffic; gazing and wondering passengers eased from traffic noise; and, of course, the very diverse array of people (some would call them "cyclists") constituting a critical mass in Vienna.

The route started off directly into Ringstrasse and elegantly turned almost a whole Ring-round before being welcomed by a honking concert next to Urania where CM turned towards Praterstern. Then CM pedaled some awesome stretches such as Lände and Gürtel before ascending into 19th district and TÜWI for a solidarity party benefiting CM itself. 

All in all a great CM which provides a mellow basis for June's CM with the goal of more people participating with less clothes than this time. :)

 

Urban Stories Beijing

I am looking forward to giving a talk in Zürich at ETH DARCH's Chair of Architecture and Urban Design run by Urban-Think Tank, alias Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner. The talk will be part of the Urban Stories lecture series which puts an emphasis on deciphering the underlying "urban plans, instruments, visions, political decisions, economic reasonings, cultural inputs and social organizations" which have produced a certain urban morphology. With this knowledge 'urban operational tools' shall be defined which collectively will form an operational urban toolbox as an "improvised manual to navigate theories".

It is a great opportunity to merge the research were doing in Beijing with Smarter Than Car with new insights into Beijing's urban development and contemporary urban morphology. 

Bicycle Kitchens in Shenzhen