My big vision is for urban districts developed on a bicycle mobility platform. What does that mean? Well consider: Venice was built around boating; Singapore has been built around transit and driving; LA has been built around driving, and the "bike city" of Groningen NL, was built around walking and horses. My work is in imagining new layers of cities, built by redeveloping brownfields and connecting them up, with unique forms, because they respond to the unique attributes of bicycle motion. — cycle-space.com
For more about Steven Fleming read Working out of the Box: Steven Fleming
12 Comments
Okay, I'll bite: what is the plan geometry, if any, of the submerged bike lanes ? What does a site-specific bike traffic diagram look like ? Is there a standard grid node, like a cloverleaf or rotary (roundabout) ?
By the end of the fourth line of your cycle space piece I was thinking about elevated and fenced bike lanes, anchored to buildings and other urban structure . . .
. . . prolly not practical.
Do you anticipate this semi- submerged cycling grid to co-exist with a superposed motor traffic level ? If rail is part of the mix, is that strictly subterranean ?
Is this a grid, at least normally (excepting major interchange or edge conditions, for instance) ? Is there a common, governing geometry; is it orthogonal, polygonal, or (?) Is there a standard node, like a cloverleaf or a rotary intersection ?
Thanks SDR. We're working with a 60m square grid of sunken bike tracks. It's a model we're proposing for very large and flat brownfields, of around 500,000sqm, meaning we're not seeing huge variations between various test sites. With individuals making bee-lines to destinations, we're anticipating less gathering of traffic, and therefore less need for traffic management at intersections. However, where shared space principles aren't sufficient, then roundabouts might be the answer. A bike city would not need local train stations, just big ones for intercity connections. A "superimposed motor traffic level"? Just step on my heart!
A bike city seems a weird idea. Maybe even a oxymoronic idea. Bike city would be similar to car city but with narrower streets & denser development of buildings. Problems is that if you've got narrower streets & denser buildings then it might as well be a pedestrian dedicated city since the biggest advantage of bicycle over walking is speed. And if your going to make the infrastructure to privilage speed then you might as well upgrade to the motor car (preferable nimbler models thatn the absurd US suv)..
Bikes will never be a panacea for urban transit because they have too many limitations and compromises. At best they serv as a sort of "guerila transit" option serving various subcultures in present cities. Probably a waste of time tiying to design and or build a dedicated bike city.
i really enjoyed the idea. But i think it will be useful to develop this in terms of how the landscape is informed by this rather than just being an open terrain punctuated by mounds ..and as well, how you can incorporate a less defaced architecture (yes, exactly, no need to resort to an 'inhumane' array of blocks to create a 'humane' csort of traffic, why can't we have both?). I understand - this would be the stage after.
Would you need to change the distribution and type of landmarks that make us able to read the terrain in relation to the juxtaposed systems of transportation and the general necessities of well being?
I really like the idea - it could really propel you somewhere, on an organizational level, on a semiotic level (are there bike lanes? if not, how do you make the biker feel that s/he is on the correct path...bikes like certain types of ground material...etc, how about the pedestrian and his or her ground condition and material type...etc).
Mmm. I'm still stuck at "How do you prevent bicycle collisions at intersections ?" A looping-and-merging web seems more promising, doesn't it -- perhaps using a rail-traffic map as a model ?
The presentation seems to concentrate on the structures, including a novel stepped-floor-level building type (implying a sloping topography ?). The cautions expressed by others are probably worth taking seriously . . .
I'm pretty skeptical of the sloping terrain idea too. The idea that you have to ride the bike uphill to actually get anywhere seems like a pain inthe ass. Maybe amongst biker subcultures, they'd think that's cool. But in a wider populace, I'm guessing most people would consider it bad design and probably a deterant to actually using a bike.
And looking at the model, as picutred above for example, if I wante to get from point a to be as quickly as possible then riding the bike through the pedestrion paths & bridges would make most sense instead descending to a realm of slopes & paths dedicated to bieks. How to police that? And that lower biking landscape would probably not be a pretty place. Likely an accumulator of trash & graffiti just as much an eyesore as automobile freeways.
give it a chance :o)
i agree though that going up and down little mounds might prove to be overkill. perhaps the crest can be for the pedestrians,
i don't agree that having an occasionally 'subterranean' bike culture would be necessarily bad. if these were nicely made bridges (they don't need to look as striahgtforward as they do in the images of still highly conceptual/non-literal models) that take the lower spaces they span above into consideration. Yes, those huge pedestrian platforms formed at the cross intersection of bridges seem to be perhaps badly thought-out.
the scheme really invites a decent masterplan as opposed to a semi-modular application; it seems to be mind numbing to just have quasi self replicating patterns of bridges, buildings and mounds...you might actually end up with a a scheme of nondescript bicycle traffic and pedestrian traffic that ironically are as person-unfriendly as the the typical traffic-centric city or town even as you replace car with bike - the defaced bicycle-scape and that would seem to me to somewhat go against the advantages of biking around in the first place. you don't conceive a citymerely on the basis of traffic, right?
then again, i understand this is more of a project brief to come up with a toolkit -perhaps even simply a design provocation of sorts- than a literal description of a proposed landscape. but its a pity that the toolkit was not / or could not be applied in a more developed scenario. Any plans for that?
also, your giant head, endlessly tilling down the page is slightly mad. it's wired being watched...
Why sink the bike tracks? I'd raise them and combine them with pedestrian walksways above existing motor traffic. Eventually cars / trucks could be phased out and the lower level utlized for mass transit. Elevating the system would divorce it to some extent from existing topography, easing grade changes. BTW love the forward thinking. Research Amsterdam and other cities where bike use is popular.
Thank you everyone for those insights. I need to explain that we doubled the vertical scale of the mounds on the 1:1000 scale model-base pictured. They're actually quite shallow. I'm more focused on mums riding bakfietsen laden with shopping and kids, than keen cyclists looking for thrills. While we're working on more images explaining the ground plane, here is an explanation of the wedge shaped apartment block. http://cycle-space.com/?cat=8
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