Continuing our look at all things cycling… Tonight at 7 p.m. the Museum hosts a free, multimedia dialogue on bike parking. The format: three 10-minute presentations, each one animated by slides charting the most creative bicycle-parking designs worldwide and identifying best practices for Vancouver. On stage are: Adrian Witte, a transportation planner with Bunt Engineering; Stephanie Doerksen, an urban designer with VIA – Architecture; and Richard Campbell, principal of Third Wave Cycling. Smaller discussion groups and a reception (with cash bar) to follow.

In our own informal research on this subject, we’ve noticed that bike-parking design reveals much about place, politics, and civic culture. Two examples stand out.

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Interesting debate going on at the Museum about whether Vancouver is on its way to becoming a true cycling city. Certainly, there’s evidence out there that we’re trying to become one, but far more evidence suggests we’ve got a ways to go, especially if we look at other cities. 

The gold standard is surely Copenhagen, where 500,000 residents commute by bicycle. That’s 55% of the city’s population and 37% of the Greater Metropolitan Area. By comparison, Vancouver cyclists make up 3.7% of commuters, up from 3.3% in 1996, according to the City of Vancouver’s “2008/2009 Cycling Statistics Update; the full report is here). Copenhagen has the numbers, they’ve got the ideal, pancake-flat urban form, and they’ve got the infrastructure (dedicated and separated bicycle lanes and a well-established bike-share program, among other things). They’ve also got the culture; a far less tangible element but no less important than the others. By cycling culture, I mean a following that defies easy classification. There is no “typical” Copenhagen cyclist, you see businessmen in $2,000 suits, 20-something hipsters, moms hauling tots, seniors, on and on it goes. 

The smart blog Copenhagenize offers a comprehensive look at Denmark’s cycling achievement, and advice for cities trying to follow its example. Check out the November 2007 post: “18 Ways to Know That You Have Bicycle Culture” linked here. I like #13: “You don’t even know that you live in a ”bike culture” and have never used the expression. You just ride.”

Image credit: Zakkaliciousness on Copenhagenize.com.

It was a quiet and sad ending for Vancouver’s oldest family-owned restaurant. Last week, the City’s business license panel revoked The Only Sea Food’s permit, after police testified they’d found drugs on the premises and evidence that the restaurant was used for trafficking. Health inspectors also reported the presence of rodents, unplumbed sinks, and filthy, unsanitary conditions. It was one of the worst inspection reports some on the panel had ever seen. The full story is here.

It’s a familiar tale: storied Vancouver business slowly ground down by neighbourhood that changed around it. Some city residents remember heading to The Only for their famous clam chowder back when the neighbourhood was lit up by neon signs and the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians who’d just stepped off B.C. Electric trolleys (the terminus building is now the Centre A Gallery; building image here.) 

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This just in: Starting tomorrow, and running until Monday, the City is hosting a demonstration of the Bixi bike-share program, using bikes and rental stations on loan from the City of Montreal. Part of the mayor’s Greenest City initiative, it’s a chance to see how a public bike-share works, and to test-drive the bikes (so long as you bring a helmet). Details and map here. If you go, send us your comments. We’d love to hear from you.

MOV’s Velo-City exhibition explores Vancouver’s cycling revolution, and is curated by Propellor Design’s Nik Rust, Pamela Goddard, and Toby Barratt (all pictured left). In a conversation with MOV, Barratt discusses how the show came to be, how Vancouver is becoming a cycling city, and the bike he had painted John-Deere green.

Where did the idea for Velo-City originate?
My partners and I are avid cyclists and we have noticed that little by little over the past decade the popularity of cycling in all of its many forms has been increasing, and in the last two or three years it has really started to take off. We really wanted to dig into the subject and try to understand what is going on in the city and how people are using their bicycles to push the limits of sport, creativity, individuality, and community building. 

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We’re always looking for images of Vancouver—new, old, beautiful, strange, revelatory. Browsing photostreams on Flickr—a site invented locally, no less—has become a pastime at the Museum.

Vancouverites, it would seem, spend an inordinate amount of time photographing their surrounds. Two reasons, the first one obvious: we’re a photogenic city. Two: we’re a young city, and in so many ways still settling in. Some of our most populous neighbourhoods are only a handful of years old; others have been redeveloped many, many times over, and have no particular aesthetic. A typical Vancouver city block might include an arts-and-crafts-style cottage, a mid-century bungalow, and an 1980s-era, seashell-pink, stucco-clad two-storey. On so many occasions, you pass a new building on your daily commute and can’t recall what was there prior. Local photography has become a way to keep track; a powerful cataloguing tool, driven by photographers, both amateur and professional, who actively share their work online.

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New name, new look, new focus, new website, and now, a blog. Lots of changes underway at the Museum of Vancouver… Here’s what’s up, the abridged version.

Over two years ago, we started rethinking who we are and what we do. Our primary focus, the city of Vancouver (like most other cities, certainly), has been changing (reinventing itself? cosmetically? authentically? both?) and the past two decades have been especially dramatic. The downtown population has doubled, dozens and dozens of glassy highrise towers have sprouted, City Hall has swung back and forth on the political spectrum, new venues for the upcoming 2010 Games have been constructed or are nearing completion—ditto a subway line connecting the airport to downtown.

Our focus now, as a civic institution, is to better understand it all. Create a museum of ideas, explore contemporary issues, all the while drawing inspiration from our historic, at times eclectic, collection. In this space, we’ll be connecting the goings on at the Museum to the city and vice versa. We’ll also bring in voices from the Museum and elsewhere from time-to-time. We hope you like what you see.

Thanks for visiting. We hope to hear from you.