What A City Would Look Like If It Were Designed For Only Bikes (No Cars Allowed!)
- 2015-10-15
- The Fast Company
The more that bike lanes multiply in cities, from New York to São Paulo, the more people ride. Over the past decade, bike commuting in the U.S. has grown 62%. But it's still a tiny fraction of overall transportation.
In order to really get people out of cars, a group of Australian designers thinks we need to fully redesign cities—including the way we make buildings.
"The city of the future should not have infrastructure for cycling," writes Steven Fleming, an urban design professor and director of Cycle Space, an organization that reimagines bike-based urban design. "It should be infrastructure for cycling."
In Sydney, the designers looked at how the city could be rebuilt with a new network of lanes—including a bike-friendly apartment building in the center, with ramps that lead directly to each floor. Cyclists could take an elevator up to their floor and coast down the ramp into their apartment; when they want to leave, they can coast down several stories of ramps directly into a bike lane. Basically, the network of bike lanes extends into the building itself.
"Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs," Fleming says.
He calls it the "start of trip" problem—even if a city has great bike lanes, if someone doesn't have a good way to store and access their bike, they may not want to ride. Bike-friendly cities like Copenhagen still struggle with what happens when you get home or arrive at a destination.