Danish Planning Comes to LA, Bikes and Pastries Already Here

Danish firm Gehl Architects, best known in the U.S. for pedestrian-izing New York’s Times Square, has been retained by Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Agency in its $20 million effort to re-make Downtown Los Angeles’ Figueroa Street.

Today, they released a map of all the car parking in the project area. Prior to that they released several renderings of Figueroa Street as a massive pedestrian promenade, with protected bike lanes, and bus lines moving easily into special pick-up zones.

This is by-the-book Danish urban planning – data driven, with pictures making the case for what we all know instinctively to be true: great cities are designed around people, not cars.

Part of Denmark’s legacy includes a long history of incorporating bike lanes and paths into the fabric of their transportation designs. As a result, the Danes have built up a great number of practical, well-made, and (dare I say it) beautiful bikes for everyday life.

We carry a number of Danish city and cargo bikes at our shop: from the Nihola Family cargo tricycle, the Christiania cargo tricycle, Velorbis city bikes, to Biomega’s modern urban bicycles. We even carry a line of Danish helmets from Yakkay.

Gehl Architects (via the CRA/LA) have brought Danish urban planning to Los Angles, and Flying Pigeon LA is here to meet their designs with practical Danish bicycles. A perfect combination?

Let’s all dream together now: Angelenos will soon be able to ride down a Danish-designed bike lane, on a Danish bike from Flying Pigeon LA, to Hygge Bakery in Downtown LA to get a Danish.

Awesome!