Cycling Friendly Cities

There’s are lots of great little bike movies about Amsterdam, Copenhagen and other cycle-mad cities. They’re inspiring, something to aim that, something to show to politicians to demonstrate a bicycle-friendly city is a civilised, modern, cool city.

Some of these movies are on YouTube, simply search on some obvious keywords to find them.

But here’s a 15-minute video from 2004 that hasn’t been on YouTube, until now. It’s from the Netherlands-based Interface for Cycling Expertise. I-CE for short. The video is available as a stonking-great, 156meg download from the I-CE website but it’s in Quicktime format. Not every computer has Quicktime installed but most can play YouTube’s Flash movies.

I was given permission to place the movie on YouTube. As well as roving around the Netherlands and Denmark, the movie includes footage from Bogota, Columbia. Got a video iPod and/or Apple TV? Subscribe to the to get this movie on your hi-def plasma TV.

The movies was scripted by Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, who used the Dutch and Danish policies for urban transport planning as a model to create a social model for his city. Penalosa is chairman of the civil society organization Por el Pais que Queremos, which is partner of I-ce in the LOCOMOTIVES program.