2024-12-22T06:03:24-05:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/150022819/steven-fleming-s-velotopia-paints-a-city-built-for-cycling Anastasia Tokmakova 2017-08-15T13:00:00-04:00 >2017-08-15T13:02:45-04:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/7y/7y9ac9nnry6na0xm.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>No disciples of Le Corbusier, Harvey Corbett, Robert Moses or Norman Bel Geddes have been to Velotopia. That means there are no highways and no racks of car-parking stations. Neither have any disciples of Ebenezer Howard been there to suggest that development be clustered around satellite towns with train connections back to the core.</p></em><br /><br /><p>Steven Fleming (<a href="http://archinect.com/features/article/84683423/working-out-of-the-box-steven-fleming" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">previously featured in our Working Out of the Box series</a>), founder of the Dutch bike-centric planning consultancy&nbsp;<a href="http://cyclespace.nl/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Cycle Space</a>, recently published a new book that lays out an utopian city built around bicycles as the main form of transportation. In Velotopia people enjoy their daily commutes, the flow of traffic is smooth and the development is mixed use and compact.</p><figure><p><a href="http://cdn.archinect.net/uploads/y9/y9x1kcl2rcigb1uu.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img src="http://cdn.archinect.net/images/1028x/y9/y9x1kcl2rcigb1uu.jpg"></a></p><figcaption>Velotopia Photograph: Courtesy of cycle-space.com</figcaption></figure><figure><p><a href="http://cdn.archinect.net/uploads/iy/iygc3qvyyshc5gsn.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><img src="http://cdn.archinect.net/images/1028x/iy/iygc3qvyyshc5gsn.jpg"></a></p><figcaption>Indoor bike parking spaces match the anticipated number of beds allowing trips to start inside the home. Photograph: Courtesy of cycle-space.com</figcaption></figure><p>An edited excerpt in&nbsp;<em>The</em>&nbsp;<em>Guardian</em>&nbsp;showcases Fleming's wry thought experiment.<em> </em><em>Velotopia is as circular as the topography has allowed, for the usual reason that citizens are always clamouring to live near the civic centre.Development has been restricted to level ground and city limits have been restricted to a diameter of 15km. That ensures average commuting distances of less than 7km and average trip times of less th...</em></p>