Copenhagen

GOOD Magazine profiles five innovations in urban transportation that you don't find in America, yet. Josh Jackson reports:

I will not be able to attend tonight's big meeting in Brooklyn so I really hope that someone will ask DOT about this and report back on what they say:

Sunday Afternoon Traffic: Copenhagen, Denmark. Sunday, October 1, 2006

Planning a city around transit doesn't mean you have to cluster everything inside the core business district. Copenhagen, whose thoughtful bike network we've explored elsewhere, recently commissioned Chelsea-based architect Steven Holl to design T-Husene, a place for living and working outside the core city. The architect's renderings, released November 2, fit into a town that fits into a local rail line and a regional rail network extending as far as Sweden.

Copenhagen, Denmark is not a natural bicycling city. In the early 1960's it was very much of a car town. In 1962 the city created its first pedestrian street, the Stroget, and every year since then Copenhagen has allocated more and more of its public space to bicycles, pedestrians and people who just want to sit and take a load off. The result is a remarkably pleasant city. Danish urban designer Jan Gehl says that the single biggest key to the change has been the development of the city's extensive bicycle network and that the Copenhagen of great public spaces that we see today would not be possible without bicycles.

Eyes on the street in Copenhagen, Denmark -- literally. Evidence that a city is more than just a skyline:

How do you measure a city's bike-friendliness? Do you count the number of lane miles, daily commuters or annual injuries? Here is one set of metrics that I found in Copenhagen:

The Nyhavn or "New Harbor." Twenty years ago Copenhagen's quaint inner harbor was a parking lot. Today it is one of the city's most popular and iconic outdoor destinations.