Copenhagenisation

Promoting the use of bicycles in cities.

Copenhagen has “given its name to a movement of cities trying to find a kinder way to commute,” according to a Reuters report by Henriette Jacobsen:

Nearly 40 percent of Copenhagen’s population cycle to work or school on ubiquitous paved cycle paths. Many residents take to their bikes year-round, braving rain and snow through the winter in a city where the bicycles outnumber the people. …

Amsterdam and Beijing too are known for their bicycles, but the Danish capital is where urban planners from around the world have been looking for ways to get their people out of cars and up onto bikes, an effort known as Copenhagenisation. …

As more and more people have become concerned with the climate, officials from around the world have come to Copenhagen to learn about its bike culture.

But Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl, who coined the termCopenhagenisation, says the concept is broader than that and entails cities becoming lively, safe, sustainable and healthy.

Speaking to The Times Magazine about plans to introduce 15 bicycle highways in Copenhagen, Gehl argued:

The bicycle highway is needed, he stresses, only after a city is comfortable for bike riders, as Copenhagen is. He considers the hundreds of kilometers of protected bike lanes in central Copenhagen to be a kind of bicycle oasis. “Some cities will go for the bicycle highways and let people fend for themselves once they reach the city,” he says. “You get off the highway, and then you’re in the desert. In Copenhagen we have first irrigated the desert, then built the highways.”