Image by flickr user Roger Wollstadt.
The Gondola Project isn’t just about Urban Gondolas (though it primarily is). It’s about thinking about our cities and public transit systems in different ways. It’s about being multi-modal and understanding that there are literally dozens of solutions to our problems and being open to all of them.
Despite that, we’ve been rather negligent about discussing bicycles as transportation in cities. So to kick off that conversation, we’re going to have a little contest:
What city in the western world has the greatest percentage of bicycle usage?
First person to correctly answer the question will receive a hardcover copy of the 50th Anniversary Edition of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities -which the winner can then use to participate (should they wish) in the first edition of The City Builder Book Club.
The winner will be announced sometime in the future, depending on whether this question is easier or harder than I think.
16 Comments
Netherlands is a country with nice bike infrastructure, and Groningen a city with a young population approximately 180.000
Is having a big bike culture so in percentage I guess should be the city wich got the greatest percentage of bycicle usage.
My guess is Copenhagen. I’ve never been but I’ve heard that in the centre city there are more bikes than cars on the roads.
montreal!
Paris, world’s largest bike share program.
It could be Berlin, Germany. But if it’s an American city then it would be Portland, OR. How many guesses are we allowed?
You can guess as many times as you like.
Amsterdam
Shit. It’s Kopenhagen. And they have big problems, because they have very much biker.
Münster
Amsterdam, Netherlands. … Already mentioned, though.
>Hum< at Croatia, with only 22 inhabitants §:o)
Staverden (Netherlands) or Bornholm (Danmark).
How many inhabitants a >City< must have?
Tianjin, China is first in the world… Groningen, Netherlands is only the 3rd in the world but first in the western world.
Hi Tim,
Do you have a link for that? Everything we’ve found has said Groningen.
a picture if worth a thousand words
http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/china-bikes-2.jpg
Fair enough, but that doesn’t really answer the question. Data we found showed that just over 50% of all trips in Groningen are conducted by bike. That doesn’t mean that Chinese cities aren’t heavy bike users, but on a mode split by trip, it seems that Groningen is first. We’re more than happy to revisit this if we find other stats to the counter.