The European city with the highest proportion of traffic by bike: In Copenhagen one person in two pedals to work or school. 

Photo: Troels Heien   Source: www.kk.dk/cityofcyclists

No vehicle deserves a low-emission certificate as much as a bicycle. However, many people find it easier to get into the saddle in the country and in small towns than in that busy monster, the big city. Amidst the hooting and hassling there, it’s the car that wins when push comes to shove. And the fact is that in 2050, 70 percent of people worldwide will be living in cities and megacities. If a culture of cycling is going to hold its own in tomorrow’s cities, in order to ease the pressure on traffic and the environment, urban planners will have to take a good many things into consideration in future. Their aim is to make bike-friendly cities – places where cyclists feel safe and enjoy stepping on the pedals because they know it will be a pleasant journey. So what exactly is involved when an urban planner wants to make an automobile city into a bike city? “In principle you have to approach it in exactly the same way as you used to do for motorized vehicles, “ explains Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Steinebach, who has the chair of Spacial and Environmental Planning at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern in southwest Germany.

“Like cars, bikes need their own lanes, which have to be marked and separated.“

^{Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Steinebach}

This can be done either in the form of special bike paths or by using so-called bike protection lanes that allow cycle traffic to flow along the street. This prevents bikes and motorized vehicles from getting in each other’s way, which makes the journey safer. In cities where he has seen good infrastructure for bikes, Prof. Steinebach has usually observed “a long tradition of cycling, favorable topographical conditions, planning for safety, and that cycling is rooted in society. When people in a city are used to bikes, they also behave differently towards each other. “Inconsiderate behavior and lack of interest in rules are often the issue between cyclists and other traffic participants.“ If you never see anyone on a bike, you don’t have the confidence to cycle yourself because of a stronger fear that people have no consideration for bikes and underestimate their vulnerability.

But there is much more to a bicycle city: For pedaling to be really fun, it is necessary to give it priority. For example, it is helpful to officially allow cyclists to use certain areas of a pedestrian zone or to go along a one-way street in both directions. “Often car drivers get angry about that. But they are forgetting one distinction: A cyclist moves by powering himself. If a car has to take a detour, the driver simply puts his foot on the gas pedal.“ One further ingredient that is essential in the recipe for a bike-friendly city is space. Cyclists have to keep a distance in order to be able to travel safely. In megacities like Istanbul, Mumbai or Shanghai this could become a problem, because there is too little space there anyway for all the people who want to get around. “You need more space for a hundred people on bikes than for a hundred people who go by bus.” Moreover, bikes are slower and the volume of traffic in kilometers is lower, while the distances in large cities can hardly be overcome on a bike.“Pedaling 30 kilometers to work just like that is not what people want. They would do that in their leisure time. Or perhaps with an electric-powered bike.“ Professor Steinebach thinks large metropolises are unsuitable for a further, quite different reason, as far as bike-friendliness is concerned: “I wouldn’t travel by bike there. Because of the air pollution alone. I often visit cities like Shanghai, and they have a lot of problems there with fog, smog and other pollution.”

Urban planners are considering what is the safest way to integrate transport by bicycle into city traffic, in order to increase the number of cyclists. 

Photo: Troels Heien   Source:www.kk.dk/cityofcyclists

Copenhagen, on the other hand, ticks all the boxes in terms of being bike-friendly. Cycling culture is thriving here. Half of the inhabitants go to work or school by bike. The Danish capital is regarded as a model for the whole world, as the bike-friendliest city. Bike paths, bridges, parking garages and highways characterize the face of the city. Marie Kastrup, the spokesperson of IBIKECPH.dk, attributes this in a video to the long history of cycling culture in Copenhagen: “Since the energy crisis in the late seventies, the city of Copenhagen has been investing massively in the bicycling infrastructure“. In this way the culture of cycling has grown in the course of years. The effects on life in the city are plain to see: People move about a lot without emissions and without taking up space on the roads for cars. People are healthy because they exercise and because the air is better, and also the natural environment in Copenhagen is less polluted than in other cities of a similar size. For transporting several people or large items, special solutions have been created that occupy the streets instead of cars. Occasionally you see a rickshaw rolling past, or one of the cargo bikes that the people of Copenhagen affectionately call a “Long John“. One major factor driving Copenhagen’s cycling project is the generally very high level of environmental awareness in Scandinavian countries, which is evident in numerous state subsidies to promote electromobility, for example.

The “Long John” cargo bike has been on the streets of Copenhagen since the 1930s. 

Photo: Troels Heien   Source:www.kk.dk/cityofcyclists

The USA, by contrast, is known for its automobile culture. However, the remarkable example of the city of Portland in the state of Oregon shows that there are alternatives. Portland is one of the few American cities where you don’t need a car. It has been described as the greenest city in the USA. Two components combined in planning the cycling infrastructure for Portland: The population was growing constantly, and across the board the state of Oregon had a high environmental awareness in its investments. In order to reduce the emissions produced by cars, an alternative means of transport had to be found that favored the environment: “Biking was something that really made that happen,“ as Rob Sadowsky, director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance of Portland says to US Today in a video. Last year Portland was again voted the number-one bike city in the USA by Bicycling magazine. This is despite the fact that it rains at least one third of the year there. Nevertheless, around six percent of residents commute to work daily by bicycle. The criteria for awarding Portland top status are its well-developed infrastructure for bikes (180 miles of bike paths on the roads and 79 miles of separate bike paths), a living cycling culture (parking spaces for bikes, repair workshops, and the ability to take bikes on trains). Jennifer Dill, director of the Oregon Transportation Research Institute, explains the city planners’ principle to US today in a video: “The planners here are not trying to force you out of your car, they are trying to give you an option.” So when people in Portland want to move from A to B, they can choose between the car, the bike or public transportation. “Instead of leaving in a place where the only reasonable decision is to drive your car. Which is the way many American cities are.” Rob Sadowsky points out a sign that that cycling has become rooted in society in Portland: “Some of the bars that have bicycle racks that replace one single parking spot with twelve are some of the most popular bars in town.“ It will be interesting to see how long Portland can stay in first place in the USA as the cyclists’ city, as other American cities are following its lead. Second place was awarded to Minnesota, which in 2010 was the first city in the USA to initiate a bike-sharing system and in 2011 opened the first “bike freeway” in the United States.

Experts are convinced that it is still possible to establish a culture of cycling in many cities. However, this does not happen on its own. Time and money are needed, and that is exactly what the cities most affected by traffic chaos do not have. Professor Steinebach too doubts that it is possible to increase the amount of travel by bike in big Asian cities in particular. “Because if, in planning terms and on a large scale, it is difficult to create a properly functioning network of public local transport, which does after all move large numbers of people much quicker, then I have major doubts about whether this will work for bikes.“ Nevertheless, it should be attempted, because the benefit to the environment, the thinning out of traffic volume, and not least the greater life expectancy are good reasons to start right away.

“The city is the most complex thing ever made by humans,” says Mark Wigley, head of the Extreme Cities Project. “And in future it will be much more complex than today. We need to find a way to use it productively,” he adds. In order to discuss the city of the future and to discern trends, first of all existing structures have to be defined and understood. Only then can we use existing and newly emerging resources. In harmony with the theme of this year’s Ideas City Festival, Untapped Capital, the Extreme Cities Project is primarily concerned with showing the innovative potential of future urbanism.

Extreme Cities Project: Luca de Meo, Member of the Board of Management for Sales and Marketing (left), Anne Guiney, Executive Director of the Institute for Urban Design (middle) ,Mark Wigley, Dean of Columbia University`s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (right)

© Audi Urban Future Initiative

The unique partnership between Columbia University and the Audi Urban Future Initiative has borne fruit in the form of the five hypotheses that were presented. They explain “why the city is such a remarkable human invention,” says Wigley. “Asymmetric mobility”, “complexity”, “migration”, “generosity” and “transgenerational capacity” are the five principal factors and most essential principles of urban density that shape cities and evolve them further.

Migration: Signage in Flushing, Queens (NYC)

© 2013 C-Lab/Columbia University

The five hypotheses

In the following articles on our website you will find detailed explanations of the individual hypotheses of Columbia University. In summary it can be said that “asymmetric mobility” stands for the varied and flexible use of modes of transportation for getting around in everyday life. In future this could be even simpler, more efficient and richer in terms of experience. “Complexity” arises through the enormous concentration of knowledge in the urban environment. Diverse classes, ethnic groups and multicultural ideas encounter each other in cities. In future high potential for innovation could emerge from the exchange of data and ideas.

“Migration” is what makes cities possible in the first place and continually changes the identity of a city through the inflow of migrants. In future this flow between cities and within cities will increase and thus acceleration transformation. “Generosity” describes the contacts between people from which new impulses and new ideas arise. In metropolitan regions in the future, new forms of coexistence will be formed, for example a variety of communities, which will ultimately improve the city. And “transgenerational capacity” refers to the age range of the urban population. High life expectancy, in particular, requires that future cities develop provision of activities for the over-sixties on a large scale. The wide age range will set free new creative energies and push innovation ahead.

Generosity: A community garden in the East Village (NYC)

© 2013 C-Lab/Columbia University

More than an efficient machine for living

In addition to these five factors, one more thing is important, emphasizes Mark Wigley: “The city of the future has to be more than just an efficient machine for living.” Wigley and his research team thought long and hard about what is special about a city, what is its most essential characteristic. “And then, when we were in Istanbul last year for the presentation of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012, it suddenly became clear to me. When I saw this city and all its people, I knew: the neighborhood is what it is about, that is what people love about cities,” explains Wigley.

Luca de Meo adds: “In future the division between work, education and pleasure will dissolve. Cities will evolve irresistibly and will never be ‘finished’.” The role of Audi in this process is, in a sense, firmly anchored in the brand slogan: “‘Vorsprung’ also includes new solutions for people in spaces where they are living. Audi wants to play a native role in the solution,” explains Luca de Meo.

And then de Meo quotes a statistical example that gives food for thought: “In many metropolitan areas, the average car speed during rush hour is a mere eleven miles per hour. That’s about the same as horse-drawn carriages crawling along – 200 years ago.” Is this the face of progress? – Of course not. This is why de Meo speaks of the networked automobile, which in future will be able to communicate with its surroundings and will be supplied with data. That, he says, is the mobility of the future.

Complexity: An intersection near the World Trade Center site in the Financial District (NYC)

© 2013 C-Lab/Columbia University

The Extreme Cities Project 2050 demonstrates the intellectual resources that are generated when a research institution like Columbia University and a technological pioneer like Audi collaborate in order to investigate future urban mobility. And capacities such as this are needed to decipher the great complexity of megacities and to establish new and better structures. Or, as Mark Wigley expresses it: “Cities are bigger than the world, because you come into the city and reinvent the world.”

A larger city context

In the Indian context, the process of urbanization has produced hegemonic imaginations and futures of the city—“modern” city, “global” city, and “world-class” city, while obscuring other imaginations and temporalities. These hegemonic imaginations are mobilized by instituting a common sensibility of “time,” “value,” “order,” and “beauty” onto the city, which stands in opposition to the “chaos” and “pathos” that characterizes other spaces such as the streets and slums of the city (Benjamin, 2010). In recent years, the aspirations of governmental bodies and corporate-led, civil-society groups for a “world-class” city have resulted in new forms of globalized infrastructures, such as gated housing enclaves, malls, office complexes, and mega-infrastructure projects such as urban transportation corridors, metros, and highways (Ghertner, 2011). A hoard of billboards have sprung up in Mumbai especially near construction sites; perfectly rendered three-dimensional images with happy and beautiful people swimming in pools, working out in gyms, and driving on immaculate highways while working on their laptops. These images offer a glimpse into a possible “tomorrow.” They promise a better tomorrow while asking us to bear with the here and now of disruption and displacement that surrounds these construction projects “today.” Despite these on-going material and representational transformations in the city, hegemonic forms of urbanization continue to be contested and the future of the city is always deferred.

Intervals and interruptions in urban time-space

On a Sunday morning at Kashimira Junction, which lies just outside of the boundaries of the city, a crowd of migrant workers queues up at different pre-ordained points around the junction. Kashimira is a place of many kinds of movements. Here, migrant workers who mill restlessly are picked up by contractors and supervisors and driven into the city to work as daily-wage laborers and brought back at night. Those who live in Mumbai arrange for consignments of computers, automobiles, and other imported goods to be delivered here, right outside the city, so they can avoid paying local taxes on these items. Along the service roads, a number of repair shops and junkyards service the truck stop that lines the junction. The other side of the junction, where the workers stand, teems with bars and restaurants that cater to people leaving the city, and outside are smaller stalls, which cater to truck drivers and workers, that serve snacks, sandwiches, and foods that can be easily packed, carried away, and eaten on the move. The junction is not just a site of moving bodies and automobiles, but a site where commercial goods, junk, spare parts, and even different kinds of food, menus, and smells waft in and out. The western express highway that cuts through the junction is a stream of steady traffic that is concealed above the ground; its flyover allows the vehicles to bypass the multiple activities at this junction and ignore its madness, reducing the passage of vehicles above to a steady hum for the pedestrians below. Under the stream of traffic is a space where people wait, where autos are parked, and meals are eaten. The flyover, which is designed to decrease travel time, and, therefore, increase speed, becomes a place that arrests time in unexpected ways; in the process, it opens up a possibility for enabling newer forms of mobility and different futures.

Kashimira Junction, which sits just beyond Mumbai's city limits, is the site of pick up and drop off for daily-wage laborers.

© Prasad Khanolkar

The space of the globalized world is almost always described as marked by connectivity and flow (Virilio, 2005). Terms such as speed, volatility, fluidity, and the ephemeral have become central to globalization; thought to mark a changed experience of space and place in relation to intensified forces that is not restricted to any country or region, but operate at the level of the entire world. The problem with such a conception is that the very language of fluidity is subsumed into a pan-global discourse of one-way time. The city, so conceived, “flattens” all notions of spatial organization, boundaries, or sense of scale, into a generalized framework of collapse, compression, and instantaneity. Out of such a collapsed framework comes the image of a hypercity of the future, where goods, people, and thought travel at faster speeds, and everything, including the environment, seas, and wild forests become a part of this pan-global movement. The other end of this vision is the future of the city that does not progress, that falls into despair and ruin. The dominant narratives on urban futures are written with reference to these two “ends”: the high-tech utopias and the apocalyptic dystopias. Both of these grand narratives are framed by a consensual timeframe of one-way global time within which everyone travels at the same speed, assuming an immediate identity between the global time of development and the time inhabited by different individuals or groups in cities.

Spaces like Kashimira Junction contest not just the notion of speed and uniform time-space compression, but also the dichotomous visions of the future. These spaces abound in cities like Mumbai. Even in the midst of urban renewal projects that seem to never end, people find ways of “making do.” This ingenuity extends to urban infrastructure in the city where parts of flyovers and large highways have become places for people to wait, gather, play, work, and live. These kinds of distensions and breaks within the dominant urban temporality are produced by the accelerations and slow-downs in the development processes, particularly transportation infrastructure projects. These intervals and interruptions in homogeneous time of development, we argue, allow for conflicts and mobilizations to occur, to put together newer forms of infrastructures and collaborations to stake claims, to develop circuitries along which bodies, ideas, objects, and energy can travel, allowing one to increase one’s mobility. Mobility herein refers to the creation of these multiple time-spaces within the dominant time-space of development and interruptions—heterochronies and heterotopias.

Techno-politics of urban infrastructure

At more than two kilometers, the JJ Flyover is the longest in the city. It cuts across dense inner city neighborhoods often veering at arm’s length from balconies and windows of people’s homes as it speeds drivers to and from central Mumbai. Today, the underbelly of the flyover is a loud and overcrowded bazaar where people walk slowly, small shops spill onto the street, and crowds of people eat at the roadside hotels and stalls, and cars, taxis, even goods carriers are parked below. The flyover somehow adds to the experience of the street, and the neighborhood, even if one is not aware of it while travelling on top of the flyover. The neighborhood is chaotic and alive having reclaimed the space below the flyover. Simultaneously, the inner city is undergoing a series of redevelopment projects. Old and dilapidated rental units are being redeveloped by private developers into residential high-rises, while displacing rental housing, commercial units, and their complex tenures, which had proliferated over the years due to a land lock triggered by the Rent Control Act of 1948. Landlords, religious trusts, political parties, tenants, subtenants, developers, and development authorities, all engage in a complex play to redevelop the inner city and increase their mobility.

Entrepreneurs multiply the functional life of urban infrastructure.

© Prasad Khanolkar

There is an incessant “doubleness” to urban infrastructure, which makes it an inextricable entanglement of precariousness and possibility, confinement and mobility, desires and their repression (Simone, 2009). This doubleness is at play in the constant deterritorialization and reterritorialization of urban space by different actors. As in the case of the Muhammad Ali flyover, what was once a street was “territorialized” as a high-speed transport corridor then reterritorialized as street. Different kinds of infrastructures—organizational bodies, policies, corruption, ghost stories, gods, law, people, activities, data sets, objects, built forms, discourses, and history—are deployed as tactical tools by different actors. The process entails not just the process of claiming and the territorialization of urban space, but also the reconfiguration of social, symbolic, and political-economic formations with the city (Jain, 2009).

Aesthetics and politics of “mess”

A series of decorated arcades line the colonial buildings in the business precinct of Dadabhai Naoroji Road, a major commercial artery in South Mumbai known as DN Road, providing a space to engage in leisure walks as well as shopping. Over the years, the arcades have also provided a space for numerous small shops to proliferate. While some shops have attached themselves onto the walls of arcades and colonial buildings, others have taken the forms of raised wooden cupboards and mobile suitcases to sell clothes, books, electronic goods, food, bags, and other items. In the process, most of the built infrastructure—electric substations, street lamps, building plinths, fenced spaces in between buildings—have been appropriated. The property and commercial economy within these arcades involves shop owners, building and street landlords, police, and municipal officers. The free flow of leisure walks has been interrupted and slowed down by this proliferation. In response, heritage and civic activists are actively engaged in documenting the architecture of colonial buildings, traffic patterns, land ownership, and signage in order to reclaim the arcades under the rhetoric of “heritage” and “order” through comprehensive management plans and proposals and new building bylaws.

Entrepreneurs adapt urban infrastructure for product display.

© Prasad Khanolkar

The messiness of the city and its economy needs a new language. Grand visions of urban futures operate by instituting onto the city a new aesthetic economy of “value,” “order,” and “speed” along the lines of “world-class” ideologies; planning, law, as well as mass media, play a major role in this ideological project (Rajagopal, 2009; Sundaram, 2009). Since the decentralization and devolution of urban governance in the 1990s, a dominant corporate led civil society has become particularly vocal in visioning the city’s future along this path (Benjamin, 2010). While this narrative of “good governance,” led by a public-private-civil society consensus, preserves a select few areas through rhetoric of heritage and environmentalism (Shetty, 2004; Baviskar, 2004), the rest of the city is reduced to a nonplanned “chaos” characterized through an aesthetic of slowness, fear, and estrangement (Sarai Reader, 2010). This relationship between aesthetics and urban politics has always been central to city planning.

Yet, on the one hand, city planning seems to be bound to its grand generalizations, patterns, and empirical studies, and, on the other hand, urban studies obscure the aesthetics and politics of this messiness under general categories of “informality” and “making do.” So how do we then map and represent this chaos so as to validate its potentiality, efficacy, and affordances? Or is the experience of the city so sublime that it cannot be represented?

The complexities of Mumbai's inner-city fabric.

© Prasad Khanolkar