Misleading title and absurd idea: they suggest having bike lanes inside buildings. This is wasting precious real estate: the indoor bike lanes and parkings are nearly as big as the apartments they service. Why not build streets in buildings if you prefer cars? or a river if you're a boat person? or a half-pipe for skaters?
What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
21–30 of 96 posts
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#22particular small areas with extremely high pop density might improve if cars were banned but for the most part adding separate bike paths that don't interact with roads much is the way to go. The sloped apartments seem dangerous and stupid.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#23That's a city designed for ONLY bikes, and no city will ever be designed like that, no cars allowed is nice in theory but not workable. To be practical it would at a minimum have to accommodate foot-traffic, supply lines to stores (or did you think that those stores will be supplied by cargo bikes?) and access for disabled people (not everybody can ride a bike). So it's a nice thought experiment but not at all practi…
"no cars allowed is nice in theory but not workable" I think cities existed before cars.
well they did, but you wouldn't want to live in most of them.
what about ambulances? fireworkers? once your place is on fire, or your dad is having heart attack, you want help to arrive in eco-friendly manner half an hour too late?
even places like Zermatt in Switzerland, which prides itself in banning all cars except electric has medical, technical and police guys routinely cruising the village in... you guessed it, normal cars. and that's a tiny holiday spot, not some vibrant metropolis.
you want more bikes in your town? look at Denmark or Netherland how they achieved it. dedicated bike lanes over WHOLE city, not just here and there. Bikes have dedicated time and dedicated traffic lights. every major road has bike-only side road, no pedestrians allowed.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#24That "bike friendly" apartment block looks extremely pedestrian hostile
The "hallway with lanes"? The thing that isn't obvious at first glance (but is more obvious in further design depictions) is that it is setup like a miniature version of a typical street in which to the immediate sides of the bike lanes are "bike parking" spots and on the far sides of those spots are pedestrian "side walks". It seems like a fair design to me.
Really?
You're using up an absolutely vast area in your building for bike paths. You also are forced to build everything into a ramp shape so that the bikes can get in.
Oh and alternative solution (put a bike garage on the ground floor). Is cheaper and probably nicer to live in since the people on the top floor can use lifts instead of riding an extra couple of k up hill.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#25One problem that immediately stands out to me is how sweaty everyone would be. I'm in shape but riding around a city on a hot day would have me drenched.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#26A bike ramp into the apartment is useless. You can just take the elevator with your bike, or you know... Just make a garage for bikes on ground floor. The article doesn't really say much about how to design a city for bicycles, which mostly comes down to providing good roads where you aren't bothered by cars.
Yes. I stopped reading there. Any architect who thinks floor-traversing ramps will ever be preferred over elevators had best start designing temporary homes from cardboard, in anticipation of living in one.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#27particular small areas with extremely high pop density might improve if cars were banned but for the most part adding separate bike paths that don't interact with roads much is the way to go. The sloped apartments seem dangerous and stupid.
particular small areas with extremely high pop density might improve if cars were banned
Cars, on the whole, occupy a single flat level. Why don't buildings spread out over roads as the norm? rather than the occasional oddity of a road tunneling thru a building, why isn't that the norm? Ventilation etc problems can be solved. There's N stories of unused space over the roads; leave the first 2-3 stories for road tunneling, and fill in the building-sized empty spaces above.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#28particular small areas with extremely high pop density might improve if cars were banned but for the most part adding separate bike paths that don't interact with roads much is the way to go. The sloped apartments seem dangerous and stupid.
particular small areas with extremely high pop density might improve if cars were banned Cars, on the whole, occupy a single flat level. Why don't buildings spread out over roads as the norm? rather than the occasional oddity of a road tunneling thru a building, why isn't that the norm? Ventilation etc problems can be solved. There's N stories of unused space over the roads; leave the first 2-3 stories for road tunne…
Probably because it's prohibitively expensive compared with just building a larger building next to the road and it's aesthetically pleasing to have space between buildings and humans like sunlight.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#29That "bike friendly" apartment block looks extremely pedestrian hostile
The "hallway with lanes"? The thing that isn't obvious at first glance (but is more obvious in further design depictions) is that it is setup like a miniature version of a typical street in which to the immediate sides of the bike lanes are "bike parking" spots and on the far sides of those spots are pedestrian "side walks". It seems like a fair design to me.
You consider it a fair design. I look at it as a waste of space. All it does is replace "car" with "bike". It even says so, with "Residential bike parking should have the same space-syntax relationship to the front door and kitchen as car parking does in a contemporary house in the suburbs."
Look at how much hallway space it needs to have a cycle path, plus bike parking. It adds, what, 2-3 meters of hallway width? Plus there's space inside the apartment. Is all that space really justified? A normal apartment bike room can store a much higher density of bicycles. Even more if there are hangers, or multi-level racks.
Using that 'same space-syntax relationship', if the weather outside is horrible so the children play in the hallway, do the cyclists get priority? On a bicycle lane they do. But inside an apartment complex?
With these mega-wide hallways, what if someone wanted to put up planters rather than using the parking space? Would that be okay? Or use it to store something other than a bicycle? (Eg, kick bike, tricycle, recumbent tricycle, stroller, wheelbarrow, luggage cart.) If not, why do bicycles get priority?
In my apartment building the solution is easy - we can't keep anything in the hallway.
Consider more specifically. "The apartment entryway is designed with space for a bike."
Yeah, no. In winter my bike has slush and road gravel on it. Why would I want to bring that inside? Right now I leave it in the bike room, which has a cement floor. Expressed using the same 'space-syntax', I walk in through the front door, not the garage door.
Re: What a City Would Look Like If It Were Designed for Only Bikes
#30A bike friendly building is a good idea if city really, really wanted to promote bike use. Being able to ride your bike into a grocery store, shop, then ride your bike into your kitchen and unload is kind of awesome. But this is the last step after bike only roads and decent bike public transportation.