We're reporting from Copenhagen this week — here's why.
It's normal for a city's center to be its most famous, most photographed neighborhood. But most of a city's life happens outside the core.
So the other day I grabbed a public GoBike and pedaled southeast from downtown Copenhagen until I stumbled across Amagerbrogade, a more or less middle-class arterial street halfway between the city's gleaming harbor and the airport.
Like just about every significant arterial in Copenhagen, especially those outside the medieval city center, Amagerbrogade had a raised bike lane on each side of the street, wide enough for two or maybe three friends to pedal beside each other if they wanted to. Though downtown's fabulous public spaces are better known, it's districts like this one that make bicycling part of Copenhagen life and culture rather than just Copenhagen's image.
And in half an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, it was obvious that bicycling is fully integrated into life along Amagerbrogade, right down to the little business-sponsored bike racks that shopkeepers apparently haul out each morning:
not to mention the people cruising past a gas station that seemed to be serving mostly taxis and freight trucks (if my math is right, the gas prices listed come out to $6.13 per gallon):
Read the rest of the story here.
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