Inflation in the Oddest Places

This is concrete (chocolate) proof that inflation has gone through the roof. This is chocolate money, which I'm pretty sure only came in coin form when I were a lad. Imagine my apoplectic rage on discovering that chocolate money now includes notes as well as coins! Up to £50 ones for goodness sake!

No doubt next time I buy some, I'll end up carrying it home in a wheelbarrow. Whatever next.

Harris Hack

Cardiff launches itself into the CycleChic stratosphere with a Harris Hack this weekend:

Gentlemen, wax those moustaches...

Private Use of Public Space

There is always a lot of discussion in architectural circles about the "privatisation of public space". I shall illustrate what this frighteningly architectural phrase means, by referring to the example of shopping centres.

Once upon a time, a shopping centre was an easy concept to understand - a place where shops were collected together indoors, and they were equally easy to spot - they often helpfully had the name "shopping centre" stencilled on the outside.

I think this is Edmonton Green Shopping Centre

It was easy to see where they started and where they finished (doors to enter and leave) and it would therefore be reasonable to assume that they were indeed private space. Even if the mall formed an important connection or route within a city, it would be normal to assume it would close at 5.30pm, and reopen at 9.00am. You would not have been surprised to know it was owned by private enterprise, and not the public in the form of the Local Council.

But shopping centre design moves on. Even the name moves on - they are now malls, or arcades. In Cardiff, the people of the capital city are the proud recipients of St David's 2 (the sequel), which has the traditional spine route, covered, on two levels. There are doors to enter and leave and there is an anchor store at the end - John Lewis; thus propelling Cardiff into the big time. All very familiar thus far, but also all very obsolete. Because SD2, as we are encouraged to call it, might be the last hurrah of this now familiar typology. In Liverpool and Bristol, amongst others, new kinds of shopping centre have been developed and they look a lot like any old part of the town. In fact, they look a lot different to what we have become accustomed to believe a shopping centre should look like.

Part of Cabot Circus, Bristol

These new kid on the block have streets, townscape and urban scale. They are open to the elements. They might even have roads with traffic, but they certainly do not have doors to enter and leave. You would be forgiven for thinking that they are simply bits of the city that host them, although with less litter. However, they are not. They are private space. They are controlled by private enterprise, and if you start taking photos, polite well dressed gentlemen with radio earpieces and clip-on ties will appear and ask you to leave.

These bits of city are therefore certainly not bits of city in the traditional sense. So the urbanists and theorists get excited about sanitisation of space, the loss of the right to protest, rights of access, rights of assembly, the impact of private ownership within public space etc etc. But in truth, the ubanists have missed the boat. This privatisation of public space has been going on for years under our very noses with very little complaint. Large chunks of precious public realm have been enclosed and fenced off, with the process starting nearly 100 years ago. The space demarcated for motoring, a particularly private pursuit, has been expanding ever since.

The amount of land dedicated to the private motor car in urban centres, for both its movement and storage, is surely staggering. One only needs to consider the rents that could be achieved on the square footage occupied at present for free. The effect of this "enclosure" is quite debilitating to a sense of community and civility.

What is required is an about-turn in how we think about the use of space in cities. It is simple and obvious; the self propelled citizens should be in the role of the occupiers whereas the motor-powered citizens must be the guests. This is where the role of the bicycle is critical as a tool of radical thinking. You see, by making the effort to make cycling easy, for instance by providing quality segregated infrastructure, a city would  thus overtly state its position that non-motorised citizens (pedestrians and cyclists) are welcomed by right, whereas the motorised are tolerated by necessity. By building segregated cycling infrastructure and all the necessary compromises to the hegemony of cars that go with that, a city will be reclaiming space for all its citizens, for Civitas.

The Inevitability of Cycling and Taxes

The billionaire Warren Buffet has made some waves this week by pointing out the absurdity, as he sees it, of the situation whereby he pays significantly less tax than many of his far less wealthy employees. He referred to the notion of "shared sacrifice", which boils down to the idea that those with the most should contribute to society to a similar degree as those with the least.

As you might imagine, the right wingers in the USA have really got their teeth into that one - suggesting to many Americans that they should pay more tax is not so much an anathema as a complete and absolute no-go area. It got me thinking about game theory, which is often used to demonstrate how humans can act as selfish individuals rather than working cooperatively, and be worse off as a result. There are several well described "games" that demonstrate how this works.

Game theory also shows us how the framing of an issue can be important. For instance, in a game involving sacrificing some money to a communal pot, the amount donated was significantly higher when the game was called "The Community Game", compared to how much was donated when the game was titled "The Wall St Game". People acted differently according to how the Game was described.

I thought this made an interesting metaphor for those of us campaigning for decent cycling infrastructure in this country. We all know that a significant challenge will be to persuade car drivers (or the agencies that protect their interests) that they should sacrifice some of their road space for others, with the aim of benefitting society at large. It is likely that motorists would conceive of this sacrifice as a tax on a benefit that they currently enjoy i.e. unfettered access to large swathes of our precious urban realm. It is also possible that they might think as "selfish" individuals by believing these sacrifices would make their journey times longer, whereas it could reasonably be said that it might also reduce journey time by reducing congestion. This is a Game Theory classic.

The lesson here for the campaign about cycling infrastructure is that in order to win the game, we need to make the sure game has been correctly framed in the participants minds. If Warren Buffet and President Obama have begun the process of re-branding tax as a worthy sacrifice, then we could jump on that particular bandwagon and do the same when discussing cycling infrastructure.

It's an It Chair, isn't it?

My ardent fans, i.e. no-one, will remember that some time ago I wrote a post expressing my desire to be the proud owner of an "It Chair"; a wondrous Spanish-made device that allows one to carry ones offspring on a Brompton. I struggled to find one, noting that they rarely even appeared on e-bay. I made a pilgrimage to their Spanish retailer whilst in Barcelona, only to find the stock cupboard bare. I reported that the renowned Brompton up-grader Steve Parry had withdrawn from making his own version due to the potential risk of litigation from anyone who might be hurt whilst using one. In the end, I placed a reserve note with Velorution knowing that they couldn't get them either and forgot about it. The boy stood on the crossbar whilst I wheeled him to nursery - nice, but not as glorious as it could have been. Just imagine us zipping along, the wind in our hair perched together on our steed; the stuff of dreams.

Well, those diligent chaps at Velorution kept their eyes peeled and obviously managed to get their hands on some stock. They put the word out and I jumped at the chance. I know the boy is a bit too big now. I know it was mega-bucks...

But come on, how cool is that?

It is made of steel tubing, with a clamp that joins to the Brompton seat post, with a matching Brompton-style clamp. The other end sits snugly over the top tube, but also has a shaped steel section that hooks under the Brompton's own top tube clamp and keeps the device steady and positively located. You need to provide your own saddle (a bit ridiculous, bearing in mind the ridiculous price) that sits on a cantilever tube projecting from the shaped main section. The child places their feet on the flip-down foot rests, and then holds onto the bike handlebar. A necessary "benign dictator" role needs to be taken by the adult pilot, as the junior co-pilot can sometimes try to choose the direction you are travelling in. This can throw your balance a bit. Pedalling is straightforward, even if a bit "bow-legged" to avoid your knees banging into the passenger in front. A small saddle is helpful, as this makes pedalling perfectly normal once the passenger has disembarked. Folding is ok, even though I still haven't got the technique sorted. I sometimes end up looking like someone struggling with a deckchair, in stark contrast to the 10sec slick folding method I had down to a tee before. The folded package is slightly larger and quite a bit heavier, but acceptable if not carrying a great distance. The bike flexes much more when riding, due to the extra weight. Neither the boy or I are particularly bulky though, so it feels fine. Some may prefer the harder suspension block, which might eliminate some of the flex.

You can have a great conversation whilst riding and the child gets a brilliant view of proceedings. The boy now sings all the way to nursery, so it seems to work for him. He loves it, even if he's not allowed to steer. Yet.

Flood

We were there. During our recent rip to Copenhagen, we were caught in the most amazing deluge I have ever seen. After an amazing trip to the art gallery at Louisiana, where the weather was like this:

We returned to Copenhagen in late afternoon. Arriving at Norreport Station, we stepped off the train and into a storm of biblical proportions. Hiding in the station, we watched as traffic ground to a halt and the skies darkened as though night had come. It rained so hard, for almost two hours, that the station roof started leaking and it rained inside too. I read on Copenhagenize that there were 5,000 lightning strikes those two hours. It felt as though the paparazzi were lurking outside, flashbulbs popping.

Of course, the rain did eventually stop. We were able to return our hire bikes in time (through deserted streets) but the ensuing traffic chaos resulting from the flooding caused us no end of problems - trains were delayed, buses diverted and traffic jams appeared everywhere. How we wished we'd hung on to the hire bikes, as the Copenhagen citizen cyclists kept on rolling.

the Incredible Shrinking City

More thoughts, slow in gestation, from our recent trip to Copenhagen:

The steady pace of cycling in Copenhagen's cyle lanes, combined with the subjective safety they create in ones mind has the excellent effect of shrinking the city to a different scale. We happen to be well versed in the art of walking around cities and understand the scale and possibilities of distance and time as pedestrians. But this bike contraption thingy shrinks distance and opens up opportunities in an incredible way, when combined with the simple device of a safe, dedicated cycling infrastructure. Freedom from the mysteries of public transport, freedom from the motor car and the niceties of parking, directions, maps and getting lost. This exhilarating sense of freedom in all senses must have been what drove millions of people to take to the bicycle a century ago.

In urban planning, we often see masterplans prepared which attempt to consider the idea of "walkability" - whereby facilities and functions, or connections to other transport opportunities, are designed to be within certain walking times or distances. This is clearly a sensible and laudable way to proceed. But, I wonder what impact there might be on the flexibility and practicality of masterplans were an additional layer of "cyclability" to be added.

If the infrastructure was to be put in to a new development from the beginning, to allow this secondary layer of cyclability to operate beyond the normal walking radii, many possibilites might open up. Putting the car just a stage lower down the mental priority list might also help cut the short, local trips that get in the way of the journeys that the car is clearly very good at - long, fast trips from point to point over a regional scale. Not the quick trip to the shops or picking the kids up from school. And I hold no truck with the idea that just because it hasn't been done before, or done elsewhere that this would be a waste of time. Presumably, the City of Copenhagen started with just one cycle lane somewhere. Look what they managed in the meantime.

With the simple addition of "Cyclability" into the design mix, the Incredible Shrinking City would have neighbourhoods that were more civilised, more attractive and just that little bit more gentle of pace.