The social, environmental, health and urban benefits of cycling have been well researched internationally. However, our built environment is having a hard time adapting, delivering and maximising these benefits that have been outlined academically. The recovery work in Christchurch created a unique opportunity where, as designers, we could rethink how a city can function and fast-track some of these adaptations.

People often ask me “why is cycling important for a contemporary city?”

I think urban cycling or utilitarian cycling, when designed right, can bring the most cost-effective benefits to a community among transport infrastructure options, and complement a city’s existing transport system. For example, cycleways are physically cheaper to build and maintain, they require less space, and they have higher capacity than roads for cars. While the cost, space and capacity arguments for cycling��are great when compared to traditional roading, that is not why I’m motivated to work in the cycling space.

I’m motivated by the ideas of connect, control and happiness. They are the distillation of decades of my riding for fitness, commute, errands and most importantly, for fun. These three ideas guided me through my post-graduate studies, years of professional work, and they stay true to this day.

Connect refers to connections with your environment and the social aspect of human behaviour. Riding a bicycle in the city creates an environment where you are immersed within your surroundings��through all your senses. You see the faces of people walking or riding bicycles, you feel the wind on your face and the potholes on the road, and you interact with the person next to you on your daily commute.

Riding a bicycle gave me a sense of control of my life. The feeling of me physically controlling my destiny through a bicycle is a psychologically satisfying emotion that is difficult to experience in our unpredictable world. Also, there is something special about the simplistic mechanics required to achieve this feeling – just go for bike ride!

Happiness is an underrated aspect of cycling. The smile of a kid who just learnt how to ride a bicycle says a thousand words; it is one of the purest expressions of “happiness”. Our increased responsibilities once grown-up mean that this sense of pure enjoyment is harder to come by. An academic colleague who is doing a PHD on happiness and cycling said that, “there is a mentality that commuting has to be miserable, and I’m doing it wrong if I’m having fun while doing it.” He��went on to identify that the medical field argues that the inclusion of physical exercise within��transit is one of the main reasons why the cycling transit environment is enjoyable. The writer Darrin Nordahl even published a book Making Transit Fun! in 2012 exploring some of these ideas.

My three motivations all contain an element of looking after our mental health, which I think is important when discussing riding bicycles. Medical research has shown that for the first time in history, the current generation is able to make ourselves feel unwell despite good physical health. This can be the result of the lack of social and physical interaction with other human beings as a result of our digitally connected world.

It’s relatively easy to provide physical cycling infrastructure. But how can we create better social capital through cycling in order to capitalise on the great benefits that are presented in academia?

One way to start triggering these benefits is through bike-share, where the community is given easy access to bicycles throughout Christchurch. 91Ӱ�� was the first corporate backer for the Christchurch BikeShare program. I would like to thank the senior leadership in New Zealand for sharing the��vision I have for the Christchurch community, and I hope our role continues to go beyond simply providing infrastructure, and contributes to the social wellbeing of the community around us.

Now, how about a bike ride?

Jack Jiang (jack.jiang@aecom.com) is an architecturally trained urban designer who specialises in cycling infrastructure. Beside his internationally recognised research work and daily architectural work, he works with the 91Ӱ�� Transport team on active transport projects to bring a holistic approach to cycle network design. Outside of work, Jack initiated the community projects and worked with the local council to deliver Back on Bikes Adult Cycle Safety Training.

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Last month almost 100,000 people registered to ‘Slip and Slide’ down Park Street in Bristol, UK. The 90-metre water slide – the brain child of living arts artist Luke Jerram – was part of Bristol’s ‘Making Sundays Special’ program. 65,000 people headed to Park Street to watch thrill-seeking ticket holders literally slide head-first downhill, as part of Jerram’s plan to ask people to take a “fresh look at the potential of their city and the possibilities for transformation”.

Then, last week, the bicycle ‘rock stars’ Janette Sadik-Khan and Mikael Colville-Anderson and more than 500 international cycling professionals and advocates descended on Australia for the Velo-City conference. The key messages from the four-day conference were:

• more cycling = less obesity/congestion/emissions
• poor infrastructure = biggest hurdle to more cycling

Robert Kretschmer @URBLR tweeted “Something I’ve taken from #vcg14: there are no ‘cyclists’, just people who cycle”.

So I’m asking….

Can playful initiatives like ‘Slip & Slide’ make cycling fun?

Yes, I think they can.

Cycling’s image in countries like Australia, New Zealand, the USA and UK doesn’t do it any favours. The majority of the population in these ‘want to get more people cycling’ countries think there are only two types of cyclist:

1. Extreme athletes – The people who get up before dawn, dress in Lycra, buy expensive bikes, cycle 200km before breakfast and shout abuse at car drivers
2. Long-distance environmentalists – we all have one of these in our office. They cycle at least 30 kilometres to and from work every day, wear khaki cargo pants and preach the health and environmental virtues to anyone who will listen.

I like a lot of people in both of these groups. I admire their dedication and determination. The problem is that the vast majority – the 70 percent of our population who drive to work alone every single day – just don’t get it and that’s where fun things like ‘slip and slide’ come in, because they attract so many participants and spectators.

Let’s consider creating a new image for cycling in 3 very different ways:

1. Let’s make cycling stylish

A couple of years ago my mate Jon Giles created ‘Style Over Speed’. Two or three times a year on a Friday night, 100 or so people get dressed up – think fine dresses and dinner suits – and cycle around Brisbane. You don’t have to wear gym gear to ride a bicycle.

2. Let’s make cycling fun

‘Chocolate Ride’ in Sydney is an almost calorie-neutral bike tour of chocolatiers, gelato manufacturers and patisseries. The half-day tour encourages people to ride bicycles, shop locally and have fun. Riding a bicycle doesn’t have to be serious.

3. Let’s invite everyone

More than 2 million people participate in ��each Sunday. 120km of Bogota’s roads are closed for the exclusive use of cyclists and pedestrians. Young people, old people, families and friends take to the streets and everyone is invited. Riding a bicycle should be fun for everyone.

For years, we’ve entrusted our cycling culture to a small group of policy experts and advocacy groups. The sight of unused cycling lanes and row after row of empty bike parking racks suggests they’ve failed. It’s high time we called on some fresh thinking, and maybe playful events like Slip and Slide, Style Over Speed, Chocolate Rides and Cyclovia are just the thing we need.

Where do these ideas fit in with what you are doing?

What inspires you?

What excellent cycling events have you seen?

Rachel Smith (rachel.smith@aecom.com) is an internationally-recognized��urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on�����ǰ���, or follow her blog��

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Last week Jamie Oliver launched his latest campaign: better, healthier and affordable fresh food for everyday Australians in a bid to tackle Australia’s obesity epidemic. “We’ve got more opportunities to affect change than any Government,” said Jamie, and he’s right.

This guy reaches 300 million people on social media – that’s about 1 in every 20 people on earth. We love Jamie. He’s a bit like us. He went to a state school, grew up in a pub and his mum and dad are down-to–earth, working-class folk.

As I write this hundreds of people from across the globe have gathered in Adelaide – Australia’s ‘city of churches’ – for the . Velo City, the world’s premier cycling conference with high-profile speakers from every continent, celebrates what’s great about bike riding and focuses on three key themes:

–������������������ how to design our cities to make it easy for people to choose cycling;

–������������������ how to motivate people to ride a bicycle;

–������������������ how to create cultural change.

So to add to the debate, I’m asking, “should private companies and celebrities like, for example, Jamie Oliver, create change in cycling?”

Yes, I think they should.

I say let’s consider creating change in 3 very different ways.

1. Let’s focus on action

“Most cities in the world were bicycle friendly in the beginning” tweets @bicyclesa.

The problem is, now they are not.

“We need to stop taking baby steps to getting people on bikes” tweets @wheelwomenride “and get on with it!”

The problem is, in the western world, we fear failure.

Imagine we understand one real problem affecting everyday people in one real city. Imagine we take the real problem – perhaps a lack of safe off-road bike paths to school – in one self-contained city in Australia that’s somewhere like Rockhampton or Toowoomba. Then we put the best people with the best resources onto solving that problem. We could make one city really bicycle-friendly again.

2. Let’s identify new investment vehicles

The problem is “Less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the South Australian transport budget goes to cycling…” tweets @MarkParnellMLC.

The solution is that we need to put great-quality technical expertise into identifying new investment vehicles to leverage more money. Imagine we find partners who can provide capital or investors who provide seed capital. In London, Boris Johnson secured private investment to secure a cable car across the River Thames.

3. Let’s try a new design and delivery model

“Everything we need to make cycle-friendly cities was invented 100 years ago” tweets @FunOnTheUpfield.

We have the solution; the problem is, we don’t always have the best mechanism to deliver the solution.

Imagine if a private-sector entity were to deliver a fully integrated solution. They would design, build, finance, operate and maintain the bikeways, the education, promotion and enforcement – yes they’d operate the cycle proficiency training and they could even go out and book the car parked illegally on the bike path. If they succeeded and met their targets, they’d get paid. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. Many Councils in the UK privatised traffic enforcement many years ago.

If we really want riding a bicycle to be a viable and normal way to travel then let’s focus on action, identifying new money and using a new delivery model. Because like Jamie Oliver says, its people like him who really do have more opportunities to affect the change that we all want to see.

Who are you looking to for guidance, hope and inspiration?

What are people doing that’s excellent?

Where do these ideas fit in with what you are doing?

Rachel Smith (rachel.smith@aecom.com) is an internationally-recognized��urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on�����ǰ���, or follow her blog��

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I gave my best friend, Sarah, the book The Power for Christmas. Yesterday she emailed me saying that “if it only does one thing –��to make me grateful with my lot –��then that’s enough for me.”

If you’ve read The Power, you know it says that “like attracts like” and that “what you give out you receive back.” Some would say it’s about being grateful, and I agree. It’s why I write in my gratitude diary every night.

Last week was a terrible week for cycling in Australia. Last Sunday, a car collided with a bunch of cyclists in Sydney, and an Adelaide woman died from injuries sustained after a collision with a car.

The next day, video footage was released in which a cyclist in Brisbane was hit from behind by a car. On Tuesday, a Melbourne taxi passenger opened a door in the path of a cyclist.

The list goes on, but I’ll stop the negative stories right here and simply ask, is Australia cycling against the Law of Attraction?

I think both cyclist and car drivers are.

I’ve had it with this car driver vs. cyclist war. The more I see, the less I like. It leaves my head spinning and my heart screaming and it’s undoing all the good work that many of us are doing to encourage riding a bicycle as just one step to help cut the Aussie obesity epidemic. As Jamie Oliver says, Australia is now fourth in the list of the unhealthiest places on planet earth.

Right now Australia has two problems.

Firstly, too much negativity. As The Power��says, negativity creates negativity, which creates a vicious cycle of anger and resentment. Take my Facebook friend John. He likes to tell Council exactly what he thinks. But what it really means is that Council is diverted into solving John’s endless dissatisfaction and grievances.

As a nation we’re so angry that we never stop and think about how to solve the actual problems. If we really want things to change – for cyclists and for car drivers – we have to do the slow and difficult work to identify the real problems. Wouldn’t it be great if people like John were part of the solution rather than just shouting about the problems?

Secondly, like it or not, Australia will never be like Copenhagen or Amsterdam. Our land use planning is completely wrong for cycling. The Australian Dream was – and maybe still is – space: a big house, a big backyard, and space for lots of cars. Everyone copied everyone else and so now Australia is full of big houses. Normal is driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for to get to the job you need to pay for the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. As Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said at my Australian Citizenship ceremony last week, “We need to respect each other and we need to leave the hatred behind.”

Now, he wasn’t talking directly about cycling, but he’s right. Cyclists need to respect car drivers and car drivers need to accept that cycling is a valid mode of transport.

So let’s start cycling towards the Law of Attraction.

• Let’s celebrate the positive achievements, however big or small. As Bicycle Network tweeted last Friday, “Despite this week’s media storm, let’s not forget that Kirsty, a year 12 student, rode to school for the first time.”
• Let’s work on the things that we can influence and control, and ignore the ones we can’t. How about cyclists stop jumping red lights and swearing at car drivers and car drivers stop driving whilst talking on their mobile phones, driving too close, and beeping their horns?
• Let’s be grateful for what we have. Australia has some world-class cycling infrastructure; Brisbane’s Bicentennial Bikeway, and Bourke Street Bikeway in Sydney to name but two. Rottnest Island has the largest cycle hire in the southern hemisphere while my mate Jonathan Giles attracts more than 100 people to his “Cycle Chic” bike rides with just a couple of Facebook posts.

We create our reality with our thoughts. Australia may never be a cycling utopia, but different road users can respect each other, and we can leave the hatred behind. And if we all only do one thing, let’s cycle towards the Law of Attraction, not against it. Like my friend Sarah says, “we can start with being grateful with our lot.”

Rachel Smith (rachel.smith@aecom.com) is an internationally-recognized��urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on�����ǰ���, or follow her blog��

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Last weekend I met Australian Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Liesel Jones.

I didn’t know who she was.

We chatted about day spas, massages and fake tans! Liesel has a dream: to open the best urban day spa in Australia, and I for one know she’ll make her dream come true.

A recent article in took a look at the rise in cycling and the growing demand for end-of-trip facilities –��things like showers, lockers and cycle parking racks. The opinion piece noted that whilst the car is still the dominant mode of travel in Australia – and many cities around the world –��the rise in travel by bicycle and scooter – and up-surge in joggers and runners – is creating both demand for new or retrofitted office premises that provide facilities, and instances where ��some city landlords are charging a monthly fee in excess of $50 for bike storage and locker use.

At around the same time, my yoga buddy, Julie, a primary school teacher who knows nothing about urban planning, asked the bleeding obvious question: “why don’t gyms and hotel spas let city cyclists use their showers?”

As you can imagine, all of this got me thinking: will day spas increase cycling in our cities?

Yes, I think they will.

Take my Facebook friend Mitch Bright. He runs the Brisbane Airport Bicycle User Group. They’re campaigning for showers and lockers at the domestic terminal. He says it’s fine for overall-wearing ground staff to be sans shower but we apparently expect�� pilots to be highly poised and very polished! I don’t know much about airports but I do know – from long stop-overs and a few accidentally missed flights – that most airports have lots of showers. They’re in the business lounges, in the new pay-as-you-go shower facilities, the in-terminal hotels, the food courts, the dangerous goods areas (not that I loiter there!) and next to the swimming pool, if you’re in Singapore.

Today on my 11-minute walk to work I loosely counted the number of possible showers. Two day spas; two hairdressers; a bike shop; one medical centre; two yoga studios; a backpackers hostel; and a servo (fuel station) with a shower in the disabled facilities. In total, I counted at least ten showers that have the potential – with a little imaginative entrepreneurial thinking –��to be utilised by cyclists once or twice a week.

I know we can’t just let anyone use any shower anywhere, but we can identify opportunities to adjust how we use our existing assets. Showers and lockers cost money, and their merits are often called into question. If we really want cycling to be a central part of our cities we need to work together so that we all “sweat our assets.” The story of this success lies in our ability to identify the obvious opportunities, to understand which assets are underused, and to create partnerships which provide advantages for all.

I reckon that outliers like Liesel, with big ambitions and heaps of determination, have the sense to realise that if we work together we can make everyone’s dreams come true.

Rachel Smith (rachel.smith@aecom.com) is an internationally-recognized��urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on�����ǰ���, or follow her blog��

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With a surprisingly comedic style, the Dane told us that he graduated from architecture school in 1960, “the worst time for architecture.” This was the era in which the modernists “cancelled city life.” Corbusier declared that buildings must be standalone objects surrounded by green lawns. One can sympathize with the focus on green open space, but this eliminated the density that true urbanism requires, resulting in aesthetically clean but bleak, post-apocalyptic landscapes. Robert Moses meanwhile turned New York into an interstate highway for suburban commuters. The film chronicles how this paradigm is being lifted with the pedestrianization of downtown Manhattan under the Bloomberg administration.

The story is largely that of how the car shaped the city, which is to say ruined it for people. While the global environment and western city life suffered tragically from this misstep, the problem now is that megacities of the developing world aspire to the same lifestyle. The wrongness of western car-driving people telling the 1,000 Bangladeshis who move to Dhaka every day that they cannot have a car should not be lost on anyone. But for the planners of such cities, it is less about being told what not to do and more about making a decision for the sake of their own quality of life. They have seen the success of the west, and now they have also seen its folly.

Recognizing that we “measure what we care about,” Gehl spent much of his career compiling data on the urban element that had not been measured—people, what they do and what they want. He started in Italy, where he felt people had a natural love of shared public space. Whether this could be achieved in the culturally cooler European north, he wasn’t sure. But he helped transform Copenhagen into what claims and is widely believed to be the most livable city in the world. The key to this was kicking out cars. More residents bike to work than drive today. And other cities are following suit, seeking the advice of Gehl’s “urban habitat consultants.” Some, like Moscow, benefit from the efficiency of autocracy. Others, like Christchurch, seized on the bittersweet opportunity that follows devastating natural disaster.

The panel discussion moved to the question of London, which Gehl criticized for what he believes the city’s slowness in adopting his recommendations, given a decade ago. This opinion was balanced by a London city transport planner, who highlighted incremental successes. A likeminded private developer gave a good answer to the question of why developers should buy into these types of schemes. They not only make sense for quality of life, but they make economic sense. As I see it, where there are no people, there is no money. And there are no people where there are cars.

We all had a good laugh at Norman Foster’s expense. His vision for an elevated cycle way atop London’s rail network certainly impressed me when I first saw it. But amid Gehl’s comedic flow, it flopped. He pointed out that the objective with cycling is not to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. It is to participate in the life of the city, “look at the girls, go into the shops,” things one cannot do from atop a rail line. Gehl and other panelists also pointed out that space for bicycles must be taken from cars—not pedestrians.

I often think there is a problem with the profession of architecture itself, because it deals with singularities rather than systems. Gehl has transcended this, and he is not the only one, but he might be the most famous living one. Working from a background in urban design or landscape architecture is no guarantee of getting it right, but I tend to think it helps. The developer on the panel said it is harder to create a public realm than a building. What I understood from that comment is that unlike a building, a public realm has more diverse users and dynamic uses. Beyond the complexities of working with a client and city authorities, it requires working with the people. How well we can do that seems to hold the key to the future. For as the film noted, the people, across generations and geographies, tend to want the same things, which emerge clearly when anyone asks them. They want livable, sustainable cities.

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Jake Herson (jacob.herson@aecom.com) is managing editor of the Connected Cities blog.

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Last week my colleague sold her bike. She said if there was infrastructure where she lives —��like the floating in Eindhoven, Netherlands, or the proposed ��above London’s rail lines —��she’d cycle. Until then she said, “our roads are too dangerous for women.”

It’s not just here in my hometown of Brisbane, Australia, that women are scared. The problem is the same in London too. Forty cyclists were killed there in 2012, the majority by heavy goods vehicles.

I interviewed women in Australia to find out why the bicycle was the ‘elephant in the room.’ I wasn’t surprised with the answers I heard at coffee shops, yoga classes, and at workplaces: women didn’t ride because of the lack of separated cycle infrastructure. What women wanted was complete separation from all parked and moving cars.

In Copenhagen, a city of 560,000 bicycles, 521,000 people, and 35,000 cycle parking spaces, 85 percent of residents own a bike; 70 percent cycle all year round; and 60 percent use their bikes every day. A quarter of all families with two children own a cargo bike. In Denmark, cycling is chic, stylish, and sophisticated, but Copenhagenites don’t only cycle because it’s good for their health or their environment. They cycle because it’s the fastest, safest, easiest, and most convenient mode of transport —��because their city has a network of separated bikeways.

I’ve visited 21 ‘cycling cities’ —��the famous ones in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany, as well as the lesser-known icons, such as Bogota, Colombia —��to discover firsthand what infrastructure had transformed a city into a ‘cycling city.’ What I found was that each city had its own unique network of bikeways, but there were common themes: four to five metres of usable cycling space, complete separation from motorised traffic, a consistent level of service, as well as high-quality streetscaping and signage. All of the cycle routes in all of the cities were designed with cycling in mind — they were direct, quick, and traffic free. They were lined with cosy cafes, enticing boutiques, and townhouses with window boxes. Above all, they were beautiful.

Here in Australia, like in the U.S. and U.K., we have a problem with width and protection. We have some cycle lanes, but they are skinny, unprotected, on-road cycle lanes on busy highways full of big trucks, and often less than one metre wide. ‘Normal’ people — women, children, seniors, families, tourists (not the self-labelled ‘lycra clad roadies’) ��— don’t ever consider riding a bicycle because it’s just too dangerous. In an attempt to ‘get more people cycling more of the time,’ councils build more skinny, unprotected, on-road cycle lanes, and not surprisingly, the vicious cycle of people not riding bicycles continues.

In 2010 I launched my Cycling Super Highways concept: a vision for seven-metre-wide, six-lane cycleways (fast, medium, and slow lanes) – the highway of bicycling – that are completely separated from cars, and most importantly, designed for everyone, including people new or returning to cycling, sports cyclists in training, time-constrained commuters, kids with bikes with stabilisers, seniors on power-assisted bicycles, and mothers on cargo bikes cycling with their weekly shopping.

I know we can’t just go out digging up roads and knocking down houses to build Cycling Super Highways, but we can identify opportunities to reshape our towns and cities to make them safer for cycling.

The Los Angeles Department of Transport was right when it said, “for the bike to catch on we need a revolution in our bicycle infrastructure.” If we really want cycling to be a central part of our lifestyle, our transport system and our cities, we need a ‘separate infrastructure revolution’ because that’s what women want.

Rachel Smith is an internationally-recognised urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on or , or follow her blog

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On his blog ‘Cycling in a broad church,’ @GregVann recently wrote, “Danes don’t consider themselves cyclists – just as they use vacuum cleaners, but don’t consider themselves ‘vacuum cleanerers’!’

This got me thinking. Are we overthinking cycling in Australian cities?

I think we are.�� There are four trends allowing overthinking:

1. ��Choices

We have so many choices available to us today. We can choose where to live, where to work, where to send our kids to school, and even where to spend Christmas.

When I was growing up there was one state school and everyone went to it. Almost all the Dads worked at the chipboard factory and the mums got whatever job was available close to home. As for Christmas, no one dreamed of a beach vacation. You went to Granny’s; that’s just what happened.

We now overthink everything while popular media tells us to value being ever richer and more successful.

It’s the same with cycling. Aussie cities want to be like Copenhagen and Amsterdam. We want leaders like Boris Johnson and Janette-Sadik-Khan. We want our public bike shares to be as successful as those in Paris and Dublin. We desperately seek advice from ‘successful’ cities��in Europe, but then we get confused with all the conflicting ideas and we end up ignoring our ‘cultural literacy’.

Choice has made us overthink everything and as a result we’ve ended up doing very little.

2.�� Entitlements

We have developed an extraordinary sense of entitlement.

Most Aussies feel entitled to have lots of money, to drive to work, and to have their opinions listened to.

When these expectations are not fulfilled, as they often are not, we refuse to accept it and begin overthinking why we are not getting what we deserve.

In the world of cycling it’s the same:

• Motorists think cyclists should pay registration;
• Sport cyclists think slow riders should move out of the way when they yell “bike back”;
• Cyclists think pedestrians should walk in single file on shared paths.

Admittedly these are slight exaggerations, but you get the gist!

The entitlement obsession has led to too much overthinking. Too much time is focused on arguing, being angry and trying to get what we think we deserve while too little time is spent on dealing effectively with the real problems in our cities.

3. ��Instant fixes

We have developed a compulsive need for ‘instant fixes’.

Sometimes the ‘quick fixes’ are the right choices, but if they are done out of dissatisfaction, they tend to accumulate into a string of failures.

My friend John likes to tell Council exactly what he thinks,��but his well-intentioned actions mean people who are trying to make change are instead diverted into solving his endless dissatisfactions.

It’s as though his overthinking of current issues makes them bigger than they actually are.

If we really want our cities to be cycling cities, we have to do the slow and difficult work to identify the real problems and then design long-term solutions to alleviate them.

4. ��Navel gazing

We have developed a ‘belly button’ culture, chronically analysing every twist and turn in life.

We hyper-analyse everything: the two extra people who cycled last week and the predicted mode shares for 2050.

In cycling we seldom consider simpler explanations:

• Perhaps people don’t cycle because they prefer the bus;
• Possibly it’s just the fact that the majority of everyday Australians have never been to Copenhagen and so have no idea what all the fuss about bicycles is all about!

If we really want cycling to be mainstream and normal, we need to stop being hyper-vigilant and start finding out what people really want their cities to be like.

Maybe then Aussies might just use their bicycles like they use their vacuum cleaners, at least once a week!

What do you think?�� Are we overthinking cycling? ��

Should we just stop thinking,��stop looking for change, and accept what we have?

Please do create a��debate. Can’t wait to hear from you!

I acknowledge the amazing work of Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, whose work on thinking at universities across the U.S. has inspired the content of this blog. Thank you, Susan.

Rachel Smith is an internationally-recognised urban planner and commentator, and principal transport planner with 91Ӱ��’s Brisbane office. Connect with her on or , or follow her blog

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I learned to ride a bike at age 7. The sense of freedom and curiosity it engendered pushed me to explore my city – GuangZhou in south China – where my family lived for nine years. My fondest memory of the city wasn’t the big skyscraper or the massive shopping centres, but the time I spent cycling through the city with my family. Mum used to plan weekend day trips for the family, where we would ride to the Pearl River 20 km away. We would ride down the wide modern boulevards, find alleyway short cuts where we would stop for Hotpot lunch, and walk through the pedestrian mall to do our weekend shopping.

We could have bussed or taxied, but the trip wasn’t about that. To me, those trips were about a family spending time together, having fun, learning, exploring and, perhaps most importantly, about a mother showing a little boy a new way of engaging with his city.

I often stop and ponder how, years later, I engage with my city. Unfortunately, I find myself answering “through the windscreen of my car” too often. Cars are convenient and I love driving, but I can’t help but feel they lead to a sensorial disconnection with my environment.

Architecture and cycling are terms you don’t often find together, and people often ask me how they are related. I view cycling as a catalyst for engaging with our cities. The transportation and the mobility aspects of cycling in our dense urban spaces are certainly important, but the opportunity it provides for a truly human experience in our cities is, arguably, even more important. Architecture can be that melting pot, where the human sensory engagement and technical skills can work together to provide an urban environment with deeper emotional connections.

We don’t necessarily need a “cycling city”; no city can operate with a singular mode of transport. However, cycling does encourage a more human experience of cities that cars or other forms of public transport don’t. That said, I question the traditional method of “engineering solution” to cycling infrastructure, where cycling and its users are determined by equations and spreadsheets. Does such a solution utilise the full potential of cycling as a mode of transport? I would like to see an “architectural approach” to cycling infrastructure where we first consider the human scale – a concept by the Danish architect and Professor Jan Gehl – then mobility. Perhaps only then can we start to consider engaging with the wider benefits of cycling into our urban surroundings.

Thinking back to those fun, exploratory and exciting bike rides around GuangZhou, I find I feel the same sense of excitement every time I ride in Christchurch, where I currently live. It is one way I can truly feel connected with this beautiful city.

What do you think?

Jack Jiang is an architectural graduate with 91Ӱ�� in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The post Cities on two wheels appeared first on Blog.

I learned to ride a bike at age 7. The sense of freedom and curiosity it engendered pushed me to explore my city – GuangZhou in south China – where my family lived for nine years. My fondest memory of the city wasn’t the big skyscraper or the massive shopping centres, but the time I spent cycling through the city with my family. Mum used to plan weekend day trips for the family, where we would ride to the Pearl River 20 km away. We would ride down the wide modern boulevards, find alleyway short cuts where we would stop for Hotpot lunch, and walk through the pedestrian mall to do our weekend shopping.

We could have bussed or taxied, but the trip wasn’t about that. To me, those trips were about a family spending time together, having fun, learning, exploring and, perhaps most importantly, about a mother showing a little boy a new way of engaging with his city.

I often stop and ponder how, years later, I engage with my city. Unfortunately, I find myself answering “through the windscreen of my car” too often. Cars are convenient and I love driving, but I can’t help but feel they lead to a sensorial disconnection with my environment.

Architecture and cycling are terms you don’t often find together, and people often ask me how they are related. I view cycling as a catalyst for engaging with our cities. The transportation and the mobility aspects of cycling in our dense urban spaces are certainly important, but the opportunity it provides for a truly human experience in our cities is, arguably, even more important. Architecture can be that melting pot, where the human sensory engagement and technical skills can work together to provide an urban environment with deeper emotional connections.

We don’t necessarily need a “cycling city”; no city can operate with a singular mode of transport. However, cycling does encourage a more human experience of cities that cars or other forms of public transport don’t. That said, I question the traditional method of “engineering solution” to cycling infrastructure, where cycling and its users are determined by equations and spreadsheets. Does such a solution utilise the full potential of cycling as a mode of transport? I would like to see an “architectural approach” to cycling infrastructure where we first consider the human scale – a concept by the Danish architect and Professor Jan Gehl – then mobility. Perhaps only then can we start to consider engaging with the wider benefits of cycling into our urban surroundings.

Thinking back to those fun, exploratory and exciting bike rides around GuangZhou, I find I feel the same sense of excitement every time I ride in Christchurch, where I currently live. It is one way I can truly feel connected with this beautiful city.

What do you think?

Jack Jiang is an architectural graduate with 91Ӱ�� in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The post Cities on two wheels appeared first on Blog.