The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence

Each day, hundreds of thousands of commuters snake their way across bridges that connect Copenhagen’s many islands. Cyclists, motorists and pedestrians speed over busy canals and race through the thin cobbled streets of the old city, while canal tour boats filled with tourists slowly orbit the centre. On a warm day, the canals are lined with sunbathers jumping from BIG architects’ famous harbour baths, with their distinctive barbershop stripes. Paper Island, in the Christianshavn district, is home to the city’s new pop-up cultural precinct. It is regularly filled with diners, who spill out of the warehouse housing Copenhagen Street Food to watch the sunsets on its banks.

Copenhagen is a city that thrives from its coexistence
with water. By 2100, this relationship will need to be re-negotiated.

Since its beginnings as a Viking fishing village, Copenhagen’s relationship with the Baltic Sea has played a vital role in shaping the city’s culture. Today, canals cordon off its many islands, serving the veins that pump life into its distinct geographical and cultural pockets, such as Christianshavn, even as they divide them. The canals contribute both to Copenhagen’s particular aesthetic and its leading place in global liveability rankings. But the harbour city, whose name has become shorthand for the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference, sees water not only as its biggest asset, but one of its biggest risks.

Read the Foreground story - “The water is coming for Copenhagen; good design could be its best defence.”

How riding to work is becoming a pursuit of the wealthy

Australia's band of commuter cyclists is growing.

Melbourne is Australia's ride-to-work capital.

More than 100,000 people now ride to work after an 8.8 per cent increase between 2011 and 2016, analysis of the latest census by consultancy firm SGS Economics and Planning shows.

The typical bike commuter is a male, white collar worker who lives four to eight kilometres from the central business district. They also tend to earn significantly more than average.

Melbourne is Australia's ride-to-work capital – it had 29,000 commuter cyclists in 2016, about 27 per cent of the national total. Fitzroy North, Carlton North and Brunswick East were among the suburbs with a big share of bike commuters.

Read Matt Wade’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “How riding to work is becoming a pursuit of the wealthy.”

Transition to driverless cars a worry to Queensland professor

Prof Andry Rakotonirainy is worried.

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) expert in intelligent transport systems and human factors believes that a road network full of self-driving cars will be far safer than today’s human-directed traffic, but what has him concerned is how to make the transition.

“We know that in over 90% of cases, crashes are due to human error,” he says. “Theoretically, if we have a driverless car and the driver is out of the loop, it means less crashes.

“In practice, it’s not that easy, when we say the driver is out of the loop it means the entire fleet will be deterministic and there won’t be any errors.

“That is not going to happen as we face a transition period of a mixture of automated cars, human driven cars and other road users like pedestrians and cyclists who are not automated.

“That period worries me.”

Read The Guardian story - “The end of cars is coming, so what will happen to the petrol heads?”

(The trouble is not the car itself, driverless, electric of otherwise, rather it is the idea from which we are unable to escape; emotionally, psychologically and physically. The idea that the imagined good life evolves from having unrestrained access to privately owned transport, in this instance a privately-owned motor car, is the root of the trouble, a far greater worry than that alluded to by Prof Rakotonirainy.

The “transition” he refers to is small change compared to the inevitable change facing us within decades, and that is a switch from privately owned cars and motorcycles to some form of public transport – Robert McLean).