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!

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."

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.