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!

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."

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 Mainstreaming

Following STC's Vienna lecture on bicycle cultural exchange between Beijing, New York and Vienna it was nice to see that some concepts were successfully introduced into public discourse.
During the talk I emphasized the importance of a process of 'bicycle mainstreaming' which could (in a nutshell) be understood as a process of supporting a broader understanding and support for the bicycle as viable means of providing urban transportation and to see the bicycle as equal participant next to people on foot or in cars.  Traveling everyday commutes on bicycles in cities like Beijing, Vienna or New York makes one conscious about the importance of the bicycle mainstreaming concept.
Today (February 4th 2012) a google search returned three results for "bicycle mainstreaming", not too many if one thinks about the usefulness of such a concept. Two of those hits are by the way related to the work of "Smarter Than Car"... :)  
To demonstrate the transition of the concept from the lecture into the broader discourse please find two images below, one of y slide in my presentation and another one from the article (in german) on the lecture's content which was published by the Austrian Federal News' website (ORF.at).
At 'Smarter Than Car we continue working that such a bicycle mainstreaming will become a more day to day process in Beijing and Vienna.

Screen shot of the article on ORF.at. Dated 2011-09-27

Slide from the lecture.Dated 2011-05-18

'Rasen am Ring' in Vienna

This year's 'Rasen am Ring' in Vienna took place for the fifth time and was an impressive demonstration of how civil society, represented by 15 non-governmental organizations and associations, is able to transform public space in a wonderful and inspiring way. (I am using the word 'wonderful' on purpose to describe this transformation, as the degree of wonder on bypasser's faces was really extraordinary in the moment you observed them being confronted with what happened on the ring road!).
The platform 'autofreie Stadt' (car-free city) managed to find together and develop the momentum to push through this official 'demonstration' (yes, it is legally a demonstration!) of how a city could look like if cars would be taken less seriously. This year there has been also a little politics-media-police frenzy as police firstly didnt permit the demonstration at a desired location but then after some back and forth allowed it again at the location where 'Rasen am Ring' happened the previous years. I guess after this year's success it is time to see it as an annual event simply pushing it through again and again.

I was curious about how Vienna's ring road can transform from a street into a 'Rasen' (lawn) so I visited the event on the earlier side to witness the 'implementation phase'. By the way for the non-German-speaking readers: the German phrase 'Rasen am Ring' has a nice double meaning, as the German homophone 'Rasen' doesn't simply mean 'lawn' but also 'to speed'.So 'Rasen am Ring' can be read as 'Lawn on the ring road', but as well as 'Speeding on the ring road', which, of course, is a nice hint to what is usually happening in this space. 
A day like this brings back ideas such as closing down car traffic on Vienna's ring road for cars and developing a huge boulevard in the city, a thought maybe as impossible to imagine as it was - previous to 1974 - hard to imagine to shut down traffic on Vienna's Kärtner Strasse, which is nowadays a prime pedestrian shopping street.
Anyway. Arriving early at 'Rasen am Ring' was wonderful as one could observe various reps of civil society organizations putting this thing together. They were helped by a bunch of school kids who obviously extremely enjoyed getting themselves muddy by carrying heavy rolls of lawn turf into location, unrolling it in teamwork and then stroking the greens into position.

After the volunteers had successfully laid out the greens, the soft organic layer, which was responsibly separated from the asphalt by a layer of plastics, was quickly taken over by a nicely diverse mix of people. One great observation was people passing by the event inside of the tramway which still passed the crowd left and right. Some of them just simply didnt believe their eyes, some gave a thumbs-up and some simply laughed.

During the day the event developed nicely and attracted a multitude of people.Also the Viennese version of ape man paid a visit with his grapevine rod (thank you for this man!) and a pluralistic society could be imagined by observing the soli-bar a few meters in front of the MOET-champagne-bar.

Next to a serious lobby for walking in urban environments there has been a strong presence of bicycle-related initiatives of Vienna. Below you see how a (for sure red) bike-box could look like in Vienna. The bicycle workshop of WUK was present showing how a mobile workshop could look like and some of the crazy bikes of Radlsalon provoked people to become

'Rasen am Ring' simply is an event which puts life into a city and creates situations of thinking about alternative scenarios and use of (public) space. In this sense I wish for it again and again and for more such initiatives in Vienna and in many cities across the globe!