ARTICLE FROM THE BOOK:
Cyclists & Cycling Around the World – Creating LiveableandBikeableCities
Cyclists& Cycling
Aroundthe World
Edited by Juan Carlos Dextre, Mike Hughes & Lotte Bech
Published by Fondo Editorial, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2013
ISBN: 978-612-4146-55-8

2. Liveable and Bikeable CitiesT

his chapter deals with the local and global environmental problems confronting ourworld today as well as the challenges we are facing to develop our cities into places
fit for the citizens to live in. The five articles illustrate a broad range of initiatives
being taken to create liveable cities as well as describing the variety of benefits cycling
offers in terms of city life, the environment and health.
In his article The Benefits of cycling, Gil Peñalosa calls for urgent action to generate
global and individual well being. Gil has written an inspirational article, where he sees
the global problems we are facing not only as unique challenges but also as fascinating
opportunities to transform our cities into great places for people to live in a sustainable
way. He emphasises the city’s relentless search for quality of life, placing cycling at thecentre of urban development. He calls for public engagement and political will to makeriding a bicycle safe for all citizens. He mention two key actions to increase the numberof cyclists, reducing the speed limit in all residential areas and building a network ofprotected bikeways on all arterial roads. He also looks in some detail at the benefits ofcycling as well as its political, bureaucratic and organisational aspects.
In her article Sustainable mobility, Tanja Ballhorn Provstgaard describe two cases,
commuter cycling and city logistics in Copenhagen. Tanja raises the question as to
how we choose which form of transport we are going to use when going about ourdaily business. She explores how a sustainable form of transport can be implemented
in Copenhagen by instituting a consultative process with various stakeholders suchas local citizens, local committees, interest groups, trade associations and universities,
surrounding municipalities and the state. How can more people be encouraged to cycle?
The answer is to introduce Cycle Super Highways, which will ensure commuter cyclists
feel safe and arrive at their places of work or study by a direct, fast and comfortable route.
She looks too, at how the inner city can be made more sustainable by the introduction of
an innovative logistics structure for goods delivery to reduce considerably the amount ofheavy traffic in the congested city centre.
In his article Quality of life and bicycles, Fábio Duarte recounts how Curitiba has become
one of the world’s most liveable cities. Since the 1980s, Curitiba has created a vast69

network of bike paths in order to improve the quality of peoples’ lives. Fábio adopts astatistical approach to urbanisation, cycling and quality of life. He shows how the rapidityof urbanisation in South America is posing a number of problems. The rapid rise of car
ownership is producing a number of effects, both short term as well as long term. Fábio
explores various aspects of the promotion of cycling, including its relationship to thepublic transport system. He looks at creative ways the city of Curitiba has used to develop
its cycle network and ends his article by taking a historical as well as a current, positive
look at the situation with regard to cycling in Curitiba.
In his article Cities for people, Lars Gemzøe describes the method, Copenhagen Studies
in Urban Life, which was initiated 40 years ago by the architect Jan Gehl with a team ofstudents and researchers from the School of Architecture in Copenhagen. The studies
were a recording of the pattern of public life based on observations in the old main street in
Copenhagen after it was changed in 1962 to a pedestrian street. These studies have been
repeated every ten years and the data shows that the result of quadrupling the numberof car-free square meters was almost four time more activity. City life has blossomed andis now a brand for the city “people in motion”. Lars describes the significance of reliabledata for urban planning and the political process and shows how the collecting of datafor pedestrians and also for cyclists has influenced the transformation process from a city
full of cars to a city full of people.
In his article Cycling and health, Philip Insall states that public health experts recommend
more cycling. Philip makes an overwhelmingly strong case for the advantages of cycling
with regard to public health. Pointing out the increasing obesity in England and what it
will ultimately cost the government to foot the medical bill, he shows how cycling cancombat this problem as well as providing many other advantages to public health. Philip
has two recommendations to public health policy -1. change the physical environment,
thereby making it easier to walk and cycle and restrict private motor transport -2. shift inpublic investment priorities from expensive road projects to walking and cycling facilities.
He emphasises how important it is that professionals in transport work together withthose from public health, because each can help the other. Such collaboration has beenvery successful in Bristol, where the Director of Public Health appointed urban planning,sustainable development and transport specialists to his team to ensure that physicalactivity, including cycling, is written into the city’s strategies and plans.

70