Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com reports on the creation of a bike highway in the sky in Xiamen, China, and hates it:
Image: Dissing + Weitling
Now forgive me for dissing Dissing, but there is something wrong with this picture. Steen Savery Trojaborg of Dissing + Weitling justifies putting cyclists up in the air by noting:
In the densely packed Asian cities, you often experience urban life at different heights. Restaurants and shops are seldom only at the ground floor of skyscrapers, and in compact million cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, the pulsating skyways often function as entrances to shopping centres and public buildings.
Yes, the do this, they fill the roads with cars to that a pedestrian cannot cross them without getting killed (and barricade them too) and stick the pedestrians up in the air where they can suck on all the exhaust fumes. It is not a desirable condition. It is not fair that pedestrians have to climb up and down stairs so that cars can rule the ground plane.
I cannot help but note that cars are even less likely to climb stairs. And, with some luck, the trend towards electric cars will accelerate in countries lacking backwards political movements. Back to Lloyd:
Image: Dissing + Weitling
I was curious to see if Mikael Colville-Andersen, Mr. Copenhagenize [i.e., an admirer of an earlier Dissing + Weitling project in Cophenhagen], had anything to say about this, and Surprise! he does.
An eight kilometer long shelf designed to place cyclists out of sight and out of mind. This is what happens when architecture gets drunk at the christmas party and sleeps with car-centric engineering, without listening to the wise advice of urban planning and anthropology.
An attitude that will get you nowhere for a long, long time. Perhaps they should have engaged Dissing + Weitling in a discussion and published that, rather than coming off as self-appointed Gods. I was all set to be sympathetic until I ran into that expression….
