Nicolò

“You have to be strong and agile to ride a bicycle in city traffic. You need excellent balance and vision. (Children and seniors, for example, have worse peripheral vision than fit adults, and more trouble judging the speed of approaching objects.17) Most of all, you must possess a high tolerance for risk.18 Even the blood of adventurous riders gets flooded with beta-endorphins – the euphoria-inducing chemical that has been found in bungee-jumpers and rollercoaster riders – not to mention a stew of cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormones that are so useful in moments of fight and flight, but toxic if experienced over the long term. The biologist Robert Sapolsky once said that the way to understand the difference between good and bad stress is to remember that a rollercoaster ride lasts for three minutes rather than three days. A super-long roller-coaster would not only be a lot less fun but poisonous. I personally like rollercoasters, and I loved the challenge of riding in the Paris traffic. But what is thrilling to me – a slightly reckless, forty-something male – would be terrifying for my mother, or my brother or a child. So if we really care about freedom for everyone, we need to design for everyone – not just the brave. This means we have got to confront the shared-space movement, which has gradually found favour since the sharing concept known as the woonerf emerged on residential streets in the Dutch city of Delft in the 1970s. In the woonerf, walkers, cyclists and cars are all invited to mingle in the same space, as though they are sharing a living room. Street signs and marked kerbs are replaced with flowerpots and cobblestones and even trees, forcing users to pay more attention as they move. It’s a bit like the vehicular cyclist paradigm, except that in a woonerf, everyone is expected to share the road.fn8”
― Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design