Designing Urban Bikescapes: A new Urban Typology

This article presents analyses of the ‘Nørrebro Bike Route’ as an ‘urban bikescape’ consisting of a mixture of lanes and coupled urban places and small parks. It is a place to sit, to play and to relax, but at the same time it also a place for mobility. It is a social-technical assemblage (Urry 2007, Latour 1996), or a zone for social interaction, where commuters meet local everyday life. In this respect the research relates to theories of ‘the mobility turn’ (Urry 2000, Vannini 2012, Lassen 2011, Jensen 2013, 2014, Olesen 2014). It is the thesis that ‘urban bikescapes’ such as Nørrebro Bike Route can play an important role in the future welfare city, not just as infrastructure bringing citizens from A to B in a sustainable way, but also as an new urban typology providing citizens with diverse urban cultural experiences. The aim of the research is, through analyses of cases, to investigate how to design bike lanes in dense cities in such a way that they open up the city and function as new zones for social and cultural interaction, or as new public domains (Haajer & Reijndorph 2001). The article presents the theoretical approaches and results of the mapping in relation to following research questions: What role does the layout & the connections play in this regard (Lynch 1960; 1995, Cullen 1971/1996, Hvattum 2010)? What effect do the programs have for urban life (Waltzer 1995, Sennett 1995, Haajer & Reijndorph 2001)? And last but not least, to what extent are urban architecture (scale, rhythm, content) & aesthetics developed? (Thies- Evensen 1992, Venturi 1972, Rasmussen 2003, Thrift 2004, Merleau-Ponty 2009, Pallismaa 2005, Pink 2009)? Finally the article addresses the travelling ideas of ‘new urban bikescapes’ and Nordic urban space design.