Urban Living Laboratories

https://www.coursera.org/learn/gte-sustainable-cities

Thank you for this fascinating talk to

Kes McCormick
B.A.(Hons) / M.Env.Sci. / Ph.D. / Docent

Associate Professor and Assistant Head
International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE)
Lund University, Sweden

Thank you so much Kes, thank you Lena, thank you for the invitation to present today. As ever it’s an honor to be at the institute. And have the opportunity to speak to such a diverse and knowledgeable audience.

As outlined, it’s been absolutely fascinating watching the rise of the urban agenda. So I became interested in environmental issues in the mid 1990s, and at that point I was studying mostly climatology. Cities with places without environment where nothing environmental happened. 10 years later, people had realized the cities had environments, that they have greenery, biodiversity, produced waste, required clean water, clear air and so on, and suddenly urban environments became important.

What I think has happened in the last five years is that cities have become seen as the places where environmental solutions can be found as well. So they’re not just places that produce environmental problems. There are actually places that can enable the development of solutions.

The key element of this is the way cities learn to become more sustainable. I think that is the core element of this idea of living labs that really holds some promise. They offer a way for cities to learn how to become more sustainable. And that’s really the main theme of the talk today.

The talk is split into two halves. I’m going to start off by just outlining some of the practices, what these urban living labs are, their characteristics so far as we can determine them.
Before what, moving on to discuss some of the opportunities and potential for cities to use these things in the future. I’m a geographer by background, so there are going to be a lot of places. That’s kind of the way my brain functions, it looks at what’s going on in one place, looks at what’s going on in another place, and try and figure things out from there.

We now accept broadly that we have a problem with climate change, science is done, it’s broadly accepted. We know we’ve got to do something about it. We have some pretty good ideas of where we wanna get to. Sustainability, resilience – these are all worthy goals. The tricky bit is how we get there, and this is really a question of governance. There’s been a profusion of theory about how we might get there: adaptation, transition, classic innovation theory. And each of these has abstract models about how change happens, whether it’s market forces, evolutionary economics, regulatory steering, and so on.

But of course, as we know, we haven’t really got there yet. We’ve had a number of things, proven technologies. PV, as Lena says, so much cheaper now. And yet, not exploited anywhere near as much as it could be. Why is that? So people are suddenly turning to experimentation as this kind of missing link. How do we get from these abstract solutions to concrete action?

And that’s really where this model of urban living labs I think has gained traction in cities. And they essentially function in terms of this learning loop. The idea that you can stage some kind of real world experiment, whether that’s deploying a new technology, or involving citizens in managing part of a city. Or developing a more collaborative construction model for buildings or designing buildings or public realm, and then the critical part is this experiment is somehow monitored in a rigorous way. So to see what actually works, and that doesn’t just mean in terms of carbon emissions.

It also means in terms of social wellbeing, happiness, satisfaction, and then the idea from that is that it provides an evidence base for some form of rigorous learning. How could we do this better next time? How should we do this elsewhere? They tend to be institutionally bounded, so they take place literally in the specific places, they’re usually groupings, partnerships of specific institutions. So they are bound in that sense, and they’re about making making material interventions.

So this is not just about some abstract “on the internet activity”. They change the city in some way. They change the urbanization process in some way. In some senses they’re very familiar. And I think this is another reason why they’ve become so popular with cities, they fit into a familiar way of doing things. Cities everywhere are having to work in partnership with private industry, with citizens, with universities.

Living labs are very much about this, they’re about bringing together all the stakeholders in a specific place to address a specific problem. A project we tried to do in Manchester around cycling, where we attempted to put a living lab methodology in to practice and consult all the stakeholders in the city around cycling. Identified all of the organizations: public, private, university, NGOs. Plus engaged in the cycling community in Manchester. We had 900 responses to a survey that we made and we were trying really to… Manchester wanted to increase cycling, it had 20 million pounds to spend, it didn’t know what to do. When we talked to them, we found out they really didn’t know what to do. We asked them about previous infrastructure they put in and whether it worked, they didn’t know, they’d never surveyed anyone. We asked them about where people actually cycle in the city to try and find out where you might target investment, they didn’t know that either.

And it was very interesting discovering the evidence gap if you like, the knowledge gap that was preventing any real learning. Or anyway in which to set the urban environment up as a platform to learn what works going forward. A little attempt we made in Manchester, but these things are popping up everywhere. They’re certainly being positioned as the way in which to achieve smart/sustainable cities.

So the latest European Commission calls around smart city funding, sustainable city funding, coming up next year, specify that cities have to use living labs. They have to have living labs in which to do their actions, whatever their demonstration actions are, so they’re kinda becoming hard wired. Into this new form of innovative urbanism if you like, but at the same time they’re being driven in some ways by communities. So often citizens establish living lifestyle initiatives.

A good example at the moment is the Cyclehack. An initiative which brings together interested cyclists in a city, tries to bring together all data and form solutions – often technology based but not always – but to very much user driven problems. They’re also being pushed from the top down by ICT corporate actors, who also quite comfortable with this idea of real world experimentation, which essentially reflects the kind of R&D process whereby you’re trialling a technology and getting the uses to feed back on what works and what doesn’t.

So intriguingly the methodology is quite comfortable for corporations to work with as well. So you’ve got a whole variety of urban living labs, as this survey from John Silver and Simon Marvin shows, addressing different areas, working with different people, driven by different actors. But they share this commitment to trying something in the real world, learning from it in some way.

Some key questions that have really emerged from research so far, they’re predicated on this I guess it was participatory design logic, that if you just involve everyone in the design process, then somehow the outcome will be fine. If we design the collaborative process correctly, it’s the kind of an extension of the communicative ideal of Habermas into a kind of urban intervention. But of course there is no escaping politics here. There is always a choice over who is actually included at what level, at what stage. And that choice is important in terms of determining or influencing what these things produce, what they achieve.

There’s also more fundamental question around whether they work. So they’ve become so prevalent so quickly, based certainly in the area of cities, on extremely little evidence, whether they stimulate even standard things like economic growth, let alone some of these more ambitious goals around transitioned sustainability. A question that the research we’ve been doing here has started to raise is are these things durable over time?

You stage these experiments, they may work or not. The whole logic is based on a continual cycle of learning… how is that founded? Does that require some kind of actual transformation of urban governance, like main stream urban governance, and if we are going to start doing this kind of thing, what can we stop doing?

So there are some more fundamental questions about how cities are managed and run here. And finally, how are they coordinated? This picture here indicates an artists impression of Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates. Suffice to say it doesn’t look like this yet. But some research from my colleague Federico Cugarillo – he calls this a Frankenstein city because it’s comprised of a series of clean-tech experiments all being run by single companies who are invited here with tax breaks, and they’re not joined up in any way.

When we think about sustainability, smart cities as Lena suggested the system’s approach of thinking through the integrated systems is absolutely fundamental. So there’s also this potential disjuncture between these discreet project based experiments, and the ideal that we’re moving towards of an integrated, coherent urban system.

So I just want to end by pointing out three key opportunities in this field going forward.

The first thing is getting back to the promise of urban living labs. There’s plenty of examples where they haven’t really engaged people properly, they’ve been technologically driven, but what is their promise? Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist writing in the 80s and 90s.

And he came up with an analysis of environmental problems like climate change, acid rain and so on, and he talked about them as unintended consequences of modernity.

So modern development, industry, science – all very rational and created progress, but created these huge risks, and he was suggesting that if we’re going to actually cope with some of these problems, we need a reflexive mode of modernity.

A mode of modern development that actually was capable of learning as it went, of incorporating political value, of incorporating social intelligence. And the quote which really caught my eye was this one: “We need institutions that can reconcile the science of data with the science of experience”, and this is really the promise of urban living labs: doing things in the real world, you get in there with the kind of monitoring, technological data, that big data stream, but then you get people in who actually use it, live with it, experience it, and try and shape solutions out of reconciling them.

So that’s the promise, obviously, getting there is a different matter. Certainly one thing that is exciting is urban living labs, and the profusion of funding for this mode of doing cities is creating platforms for new partnership.

Talking to someone in Manchester who’s the CEO of the smart district there about the innovation of actually working more closely with not just corporations like Siemens, but resident groups and so on.

Which is often seen as just work, hard work like this is a barrier. We have to do all this before we can actually fix the city, but we were trying to suggest that actually that mode of working is the innovation in itself. Trying to work with new ways, more closely with partners, and develop solutions together.

So there’s something interesting happening around, whether this constitutes a new mode urbanism, a kind of experimental urbanism if you like, rather than just urban experiments.

There’s a greater role for universities here, going back to that cycling lab project we did a few years ago, there was a need From the stake holders, the evidence. Evidence that can be provided by research, often student led research. There was also an opportunity to take the co-production ethic to a different level though and actually co-produce the research questions. So, the people we consulted, we asked them, we said, if you were given 20,000 pounds to research cycling in Manchester, what would you research?

And we got some great suggestions, but intriguingly, we also got some suggestions that were the same. The police were investigated in the same thing as the cycling pressure group who were interested in the same things as the actual cyclists. Now that sounds like something that actually needs to be, that’s a valid knowledge need, right? When everyone needs it.

So it was fascinating from that point of view. Trying to bring the university resource, all this capacity, students, staff, master students. To bear in a more strategic way.

So I think there’s an opportunity for universities there. I think the real opportunity, the million dollar question, is around whether these experiments in urban living labs can drive some greater urban transformation.

So as I kind of suggested on the way through, we’ve had individual experiments We’ve had demonstration projects in the cities for decades now. They have often worked and yet cities aren’t sustainable still. So there’s a question of: “Okay you’ve done experiments, but so what?”

So the real game at the moment is how to upscale, replicate, roll out, decarbonize, transition pick your verb, but they all relate to how to move from the specific to something more general. And that’s really where the urban living lab methodology holds some kind of promise for cities. Because it offers a way to generate some robust learning to allow cities to do that.

So just to conclude, in terms of the practices I think it’s clear that urban living labs are enabling places, very much places, to host new styles of experimentation. They provide platforms for collaboration, and enable cities to secure funding that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get.

There’s a huge opportunity for cities to involve citizens in urban innovation, and that’s really the critical thing here. There’s an opportunity for us in universities to play a greater role here. I think there is also an opportunity for cities to drive transformation from the ground up and this is very much the place, the actual place of cities. I have a great quote from a policy maker for years who talked about wanting to create learning landscape, a landscape that you could learn through. A landscape that was experimented with that showed the results of its experiment.

So for me, there’s a really exciting, broader question about how we move towards a more innovative form of urbanism. Thank you.

The Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic

The Design Manual for Bicycle traffic, published by CROW, states:

2.4 The bicycle and sustainable safety

A sustainable safe road network is based on the following principles:

  • Functionality of roads: monofunctionality of roads in a hierarchically structured road network
  • Homogeneity of mass and/or direction and speed: equality in speed, direction and mass at moderate to high speeds.
  • Willingness to forgive of the surroundings and road users among themselves: limitation of injury due to a willingness to forgive of the surroundings and road users anticipation of the      behaviour of others.
  • Recognisability of the design of the road and predictability of how the road continues and the behaviour of road users: surroundings and the behaviour of other road users who satisfy the expectations of road users by means of consistency and continuity of the road design
  • Status acknowledgement by the traffic participant: the ability to estimate task proficiency

There is now general agreement on dividing the road network into three categories for motorised traffic, namely:

  • Distributor roads

These are designed to ensure a continuous, uninterrupted flow of traffic at a relatively high speed.

This means that the road has separate directions of flow, there is no crossing traffic and a relatively homogenous group of road users.

Cyclists are not permitted on distributor roads, they cross them by means of overpasses or tunnels.

  • District access roads

These roads are used for flow and exchange.

However, these functions are separated spatially: the flow takes place on the road sections, the exchange on the intersections.

On road sections, as much as possible is done to meet the requirements of a distributor road: separate directions of flow, there is no crossing traffic and a relative homogenous group of road users.

At the exchange points (intersections and crossings) speed should be low enough to avoid serious conflicts.

  • Estate access roads

These roads are intended to provide access to housing estates, which means that all groups of road users must be able to use them. It must be possible to make manoeuvres such as parking, getting in and out, turning and crossing safely, so the speed of motorised traffic must be kept low.”

 

 

What is interesting about this thinking, which has been used in Britain for example in New Towns like Stevenage, is that shopping and town centres become the equivalent of Estate Access Roads.

This thinking does use “shared space” but with an interesting twist – motorised transport are guests.

The thinking that is used for motorways and major dual carriageways has been extended to use similar rules for pedestrians and cyclists.

 

I understand one of the core issues to be around the evolution of law and practice. I understand there are at least six main areas of law involved:

  • Road and traffic
  • Equality
  • Health and Safety
  • Public nuisance etc
  • Tort of nuisance etc
  • Criminal law of harassment, assault, manslaughter and murder

 

A fascinating example is that road agencies collect statistics about “killed and seriously injured”, but health and safety, aircraft, rail, hospitals, forensics and many other areas want to know about everything, including near misses and people not doing things.

Roads would seem to be following out dated and dangerously misleading practices, I diagnose where that happens as a symptom of institutionalisation.

Recommendations

I wish to see detailed audits that include looking in detail and carefully thinking about all the legal, practice and design assumptions that are being used in proposals.

 

 

 

 

Cycling and the NHS

Following is from a recent email correspondence with the NHS Sustainability Unit. Apologies, needs to be read in date order!

 

Hi Clive,

I apologise that you feel this way – as you can imagine it is an exceptionally broad agenda and as a very small team of 5 we are doing our very best to cover as much of the sustainability agenda for the health and care system as possible. Suggestions such as yours are always helpful and are taken into consideration when we plan our programme of work. We are working with local authorities via health and wellbeing boards – you might like to look at our Toolkit recently developed for this purpose, which has a section on active travel: http://www.sduhealth.org.uk/areas-of-focus/community-resilience/health-and-wellbeing-board-toolkit.aspx

Best wishes,

Shelley

From: Clive Durdle [mailto:clivedurdle@me.com]
Sent: 29 October 2015 14:08
To: sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)
Subject: Re: Cycling and the NHS

Thanks for your response. I hope you do more than “could”.

I understand this conversation has highlighted a serious fault in nhs and phe’s responses to sustainability, possibly due to the various organisations and others like local authority planning and highways and the dot not really grasping the step changes that are needed throughout the various systems.

I understand you are in a critical position to lead change and understand this subject to be a critical part of your business plan.

I must conclude by noting that your team do not seam to have a good enough understanding of sustainable development and what is possible.

I was not expecting the sorts of replies I have got.

Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Oct 2015, at 03:35, “sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)” <england.sdu@nhs.net> wrote:

Hi Clive,

Our work programme is currently focussed around implementation of the sustainable development strategy – and our work tends to be set by the priorities of our two host organisations – NHS England and PHE. We are currently developing next year’s business plan so we could take this into consideration, thank you.

Best wishes,

Shelley

From: Clive Durdle [mailto:clivedurdle@me.com]
Sent: 29 October 2015 02:42
To: sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)
Subject: Re: Cycling and the NHS

I am also very surprised at your response considering what this states:

Pedalling your way to better health

Thanks

Sent from my iPad

On 28 Oct 2015, at 13:27, Clive Durdle <clivedurdle@mac.com> wrote:

Do you not have a discussion fora?

Sent from my iPhone

On 28 Oct 2015, at 03:53, “sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)” <england.sdu@nhs.net> wrote:

Thank you Clive – unfortunately as we are a very small team and this is not currently in our programme of work it is not something that we would be able to do currently – however it is an excellent suggestion for future work.

Best wishes,

Shelley

From: Clive Durdle [mailto:clivedurdle@mac.com]
Sent: 14 October 2015 17:49
To: sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)
Subject: Re: Cycling and the NHS

Thanks would it be possible for your team to start a discussion about this, and contributors would then be able to begin the process of collating evidence based interventions?

Sent from my iPad

On 14 Oct 2015, at 14:35, sdu England (NHS ENGLAND) <england.sdu@nhs.net> wrote:

Dear Clive,

Thank you for your email. As far as we are aware there is currently no NHS-wide strategy on cycling, however there is plenty of activity around encouraging staff and patients to cycle to and from hospitals/NHS buildings. I would suggest firstly looking at our case studies page which has a few examples with this, along with contact details of people within the organisations if you would like to discuss how they implemented their plans further (http://www.sduhealth.org.uk/resources/case-studies.aspx).

As cycling integrates a broad range of issues perhaps your local health and wellbeing board would be a good point of contact?

Best wishes,

Shelley

First health sector-wide report on preparations for climate change available at http://www.sduhealth.org.uk/ARP

Shelley Hugill
Business Support and Project Manager
Sustainable Development Unit (SDU)

T: 0113 8253220
E: shelley.hugill@nhs.net
W: http://www.sduhealth.org.uk
Follow us on Twitter @sduhealth

Victoria House, Capital Park, Fulbourn, Cambridge, CB21 5XB

The Sustainable Development Unit works across NHS England and Public Health England.
High quality health and care for all, now and for future generations

Please think whether you need to print this email

From: Clive Durdle [mailto:clivedurdle@mac.com]
Sent: 08 October 2015 15:38
To: sdu England (NHS ENGLAND)
Subject: Cycling and the NHS

Is there an NHS strategy about this? Is anyone trying to implement anything?

I suggest Stevenage would be a very interesting place to develop models and policies, not just for personal transport but for the last mile issue as it does have a reasonable cycling infrastructure, although badly underused and in need of upgrading, and allowing integration of public health, transport logistics, accessibility and sustainability matters with health issues.

http://www.ecf.com/wp-content/uploads/Declaration-of-Luxembourg-on-Cycling-as-a-climate-friendly-Transport-Mode.pdf

Redbridge Budget Consultation

I am not clear what is happening in Redbridge, but I must ask if the officers and councillors actually have any professional competence.  For example, we seem to have proposed budget cuts in both school and disability transport, but the various officers have not written a jointly researched and argued proposal with detailed equality audit.

It makes me wonder if the council is aware of ideas like holistic government, whole system thinking, institutionalisation and silos.

When a business is faced by the extremely significant challenges LB Redbridge is facing it is often wise to look carefully at what is happening elsewhere and ask if some of those ideas may be of value.

I understand a budget is intended to implement a business plan and to provide a check of an organisation’s direction of travel. It is a consequence of a well thought out strategy.

Many of these suggestions cannot be implemented quickly but by starting in these directions of travel, the supertanker can be turned.

Service redesign

Other Boroughs and authorities in London and elsewhere are merging, sharing services and other permutations.

Services are being merged, for example Adult and Children’s Social Services.

Around the world, complete redesign of health and social services on community health worker and related models is occurring. Bill Gates is a very strong supporter of these models that actually do work anywhere, not just the developing world.

There are many similar ideas.

Actual Economic costs

It is not obvious that all services have been properly economically costed for and being charged for. Various surveys from around the world are showing for example the serious waste of land that occurs with poor use of space for car parking. This is land that can be developed for housing and business at far higher densities. This is happening In Redbridge with Crossrail, but it is not obvious that these changes are being integrated into Redbridge’s strategic and financial planning.

There are two core vectors to this – sustainability and inclusion. The term triple bottom line accounting is one of the ways to express this, but following the Paris Climate Change agreement, how does the proposed Budget assist Redbridge for example with moving to minimising the burning of fossil fuels?

Next to this, have all possible sources of income to help meet the needs of our local commonwealth actually been explored?

 

NHS Public Health Walking and Cycling

Demos have written the following in their publication “Holistic Government”:

The core problem for government is that it has inherited from the nineteenth century a model of organisation that is structured around functions and services rather than around solving problems. Budgets are divided into separate silos for health, education, law and order and so on.

The vertical links between departments and agencies in any one field and professional groups such as the police, teachers, doctors and nurses are strong.

The horizontal links are weak or non-existent.1

Beck writes:

The effect of changes in physical exercise on progression of musculoskeletal disability in seniors has rarely been studied2

I must note that the above are old comments, but my impression is that these issues are not really being tackled!

But are not issues of active travel, primarily walking and cycling, critical issues for commissioners interested in sustainability?

Do not the NHS, PHE and commissioners have critical duties to work very closely with their partners in highways engineering and planning to enable sustainable cities?

I am unclear that cycling and walking are understood as sustainability issues! I recommend starting in a town like Stevenage.

How might commissioners assist? Hint, solutions are about whole systems3, neighbourhoods4, equality audits5, and concepts like ecological public health6!

  1. Perri, 6. Holistic Government. Demos (1997). at <http://www.demos.co.uk/files/holisticgovernment.pdf?1240939425&gt;
  2. Berk, D. R., Hubert, H. B. & Fries, J. F. Associations of Changes in Exercise Level With Subsequent Disability Among Seniors: A 16-Year Longitudinal Study. Journals Gerontol. Ser. A Biol. Sci. Med. Sci. 61, 97–102 (2006).
  3. Meadows, D. H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008). at <https://books.google.com/books?id=CpbLAgAAQBAJ&pgis=1&gt;
  4. Gehl, J. Cities for People. (Island Press, 2013). at <http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=lBNJoNILqQcC&pgis=1&gt;
  5. Durdle, C. Lived Experience | Clive Durdle’s Blog on WordPress.com. at <https://clivedurdle.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/lived-experience/&gt;
  6. Rayner, G. & Lang, T. Ecological Public Health: Reshaping the Conditions for Good Health. (Routledge, 2013). at <https://books.google.com/books?id=BUj95l7api4C&pgis=1&gt;

 

Denmark and Netherlands to cooperate about cycling reduction

Danish original

DEBATE: Bicycle Fund’s Veterinary Research is a short-term downgrading of the already ailing cycling harmful to both human health and the environment. It writes a number of municipalities in community with the message of continuing government support.

“I’m so glad my bike,” sings children across the country, but much remained Unfortunately, when we look at the use of the two-wheel.

In Denmark, cycling declining and has been so for 20 years. Only in the capital and some of the larger cities succeed one to break the curve.

Falling prices of fuels and cars means that there has never before been so many cars in Denmark. Therefore, there is a clear need for investment in cycling infrastructure and cycling promotion activities in small and large cities, it is both in the State, regions, municipalities and citizens’ interest to turn things around.

There is strong economic gains by getting the Danes in the saddle. And this is best done by giving cyclists attractive terms.

LINKS Althingi

Morten Kabell: Only with the cars at the back we fight congestion
City Engineer: BRT buses take up the battle against congestion
FDL: Politicians sylter social dumping
Cycling deserve a high priority
The obvious solution is that local and national government together to invest in the area.

Therefore, it is a step in the wrong direction to drop the national cycling pool, which otherwise until last year has made a huge difference in local government work to improve conditions and make it inviting to cycle to and from the car.

This downgrading of cycling will have major consequences for the many positive ways, cycling contributes to our society.

This applies both with regard to improving public health, minimizing congestion and of course reduce pollution from cars when we make it easy to replace the car with the bike.

The interaction is important when we have to Danes to leave the car and jump up on the bike.

The investment pays off
Incentives for municipalities to invest in asphalt for cyclists is considerably smaller than the state. Economic analyzes of a full fledged network of Super Bike Trails in Capital Region shows that the municipalities by pure municipal finance will experience a deficit, while the state will have a significant surplus seen over 50 years.

This is because the health benefits of increased cycling primarily receipts out of the region and the state. Only at 80 percent government financial capital expenditures, investments amount to gains for State and municipality.

Lets municipalities simply cycle track decay, fewer cycling and more likely to sit in the car.

Here they waste time waiting in traffic, wasted time which is expensive for society.

Cyclists know that there are good economic sense to take the bike instead of the car. The same is true for the economy. Nationally, the economic advantage of cycling significantly higher than for cars.

The analyzes show that, for example super cycle tracks overall in a high socio-economic return of 19 percent and a surplus of 7.3 billion. Much of the Ministry of Finance demands a return of at least 5 percent for investments in infrastructure projects.

This represents investment in the future, as in the degree pays off. One can ask oneself whether we and the government can afford not to.

Need an active state
In Copenhagen cycled a lot, and it’s really positive. Unfortunately, the share of cyclists significantly in most of the rest of the country. Both the Esbjerg and Aalborg, we experience this sad development.

It looks different in the Netherlands, we can learn much from. If you look for example at the Amsterdam region, remains bike share high, also in suburban and rural districts outside the city center.

The Netherlands benefits from the state plays a more active role in planning the infrastructure, and it affects cycling positively.

The active state role in the Netherlands has led to a higher and more stable level of investments across municipal borders and better coherence in infrastructure. We have also needed at home.

In Denmark, local authorities must attempt to accomplish this task, and it will cyclists suffer now that is not allocated government fund to co-finance cycling initiatives.

All things being equal, it will mean an even larger decline in the proportion of cyclists.

The bikes must into several pools
However, there are points of light. The pool for public transport is maintained, and here, a sizeable portion hopefully be a priority for the super bike paths and bicycle parking in connection with public transport.

Will we get the people to take the green modes of transport for themselves, there will be more road space for the necessary commercial traffic, while the environment and public health are developing positively.

Similarly, Transport Minister Hans Christian Schmidt (V) opened negotiations on the billion kroner, which is available in the Infrastructure Fund.

One billion kroner is not much money for infrastructure improvements throughout Denmark. In a large bet on the bikes will get most of the money and the opportunity to diversify investments to cities throughout the country.

Also the pool “Improving access to public transportation” of one billion kroner has the potential to upgrade among other bicycle parking at DSB’s stations, where today there is a significant backlog.

It requires political will from the government and the parties to the agreement, the cycling should feel a noticeable effect of these crowns, and probably sounds a billion of much, but we have to wait and see what accrues to an area that can certainly be classified as needy.

The good development does not happen by itself
It does not mean that a government side lower priority to cycling by cutting funding opportunities. It will simply leave too big a gap in the future development of the regional cycling.

In the worst case, the proportion of cyclists fall to an unacceptable level, which will require significant resources to correct.

Every day trills over 100 new electric bicycles out on the street. Experts expect that 20 percent of all bicycles in Denmark a few years, electric bicycles, one could recently read in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

It is positive that people choose elcyklen and using it to commute longer distances, thus becoming the bike really an alternative to the car.

The development requires also that we ensure that our bike paths across municipal boundaries are intact and consistent. Here’s Super Cycle tracks an extremely important basis doubly if we have to support the healthy development.

A bicycle pool helps to focus on the promotion of cycling, and actually investing municipalities in this way significantly more than the state.

A bicycle pool requires local bike action and is thus an important catalyst for many municipalities that would not do much to cycling.

Bicycle pool also means that projects are actually evaluated, so that knowledge comes all others for good