Combining new transportation methods that encourage the principles of a healthy life style with traditional roads can raise land values, attract investment and activate the urban environment. The social revolution that Bazalgette offered London in the 19th Century, Cycle Space might just bring to London and our world’s cities in the 21st.

Active transportation routes and linear parks, on the other hand, regenerate their surroundings, bringing activity and value to blighted sections of the city.

It envisioned a 1km stretch of dual carriageway between Salford University and Manchester city centre as a 4-lane linear Park. One lane is grassed, another a water channel, another sand and the last a running track. Commuters leave their cars in a multi-storey Car (P)Ark. The interchange also incorporates a suburban train station, cycle docking station, stables, and a boathouse and changing rooms. From the Car (P)Ark commuters head east into Manchester walking, jogging, cycling, rollerblading, horse riding, swimming or rowing. The Park terminates at a Suit Park where commuters can shower, change and get a coffee. (The word “suit” refers to the business suit). Eight hours later, on their way home, commuters deposit their clothes and return through the Park, to the interchange to collect their car or catch a train. The scheme could be extended to each of the radial routes into Manchester and at intervals these Parks could link, completing a comprehensive green commuter infrastructure. Save this picture!

At the time, “Park + Jog” was treated as a curiosity; we still describe it as a “ utopian scheme.” But nowadays, it seems less and less fanciful.

Disused railway lines are being harnessed as leisure trails, and in some cases these were working well for commuters too.

Recently I took four weeks out of the office to cycle from Chicago to New York and to visit cities along the way. My 1,300 mile trip was part of a group expedition called P2P that went from Portland, Oregon to Portland Place in London (read more about it on portlandtoportland.org). The objective was to report back to the UK and London in particular on American city-cycling culture and the political initiatives that are emerging in the US.

I believe that cycling might just be the catalyst for a 21st Century urban renaissance.

This monumental feat of engineering offers us the best precedent for the impact the bicycle might have on London or any city for that matter.

Of course, the creation of these green networks need not be at the expense of the motorist.

What is striking about these parks is the positive impact they can have on their surrounding neighbourhoods, particularly when one considers the alternative.

Imagine that the Boris Bike docking stations outside railway stations and in key public spaces might incorporate general cycle parking. Thus the Cycle City would bring with it a new building type – the multistory cycle park. Fietsenstalling, a multistorey cycle park outside Amsterdam’s Centraal rail station, with its Escher-like pattern of steel decks that suspend over the canal, is a dramatic model. Its very presence is didactic. It is persuasive.

whilst it may not be possible to ban the car outright, it ought to be possible to keep HGVs and delivery vans out during the day, when their impact on the physical environment and the safety of pedestrians and cyclists is most evident.

What I remember about that day was the sense of calm, how quiet it was, and how generous the streets actually felt. For a brief moment the public realm was uniquely different.

Cycling offers us, for the first time in more than a century and a half, the chance to build an infrastructure that will bring with it significant public health improvements. In our auto-centric world, we have unprecedented levels of health problems - obesity, diabetes, etc - all associated with our sedentary lifestyles. Cycling should mean a fitter population and a longer life expectancy, which would take pressure off the National Health Service and bring huge economic benefits. It would of course also reduce energy consumption.

Towards the end of my trip, it occurred to me that this explosion in cycling, ought to be put into an historic context, in order to enable the politicians and the public to recognize the scale of the opportunity, the change it might bring to our cities and our lives.

What impressed us was the speed of progress. When we were in Chicago at the end of June, the city launched its own bike share scheme. New York already has one. The docking stations bring tangible cycle infrastructure to the city streets. In-carriage and separated cycle routes have begun to proliferate. Disused railway lines are being harnessed as leisure trails, and in some cases these were working well for commuters too. Indianapolis had recently completed their “Cultural Trail,” an active transportation loop linking the five central city districts.

However, the real question is: will cycling actually change the city? Will it result in new urban forms or, as the title of Australian academic Dr Steven Fleming’s new book predicts, a “Cycle Space”? Like Fleming, I believe so. I believe that cycling might just be the catalyst for a 21st Century urban renaissance.

Why Cycle Cities Are the Future

he 2010 launch of the “Boris Bike” - London’s cycle hire scheme, named after mayor Boris Johnson – was the clearest indication to date that cycling was no longer just for a minority of fanatics but a healthy, efficient and sustainable mode of transport that city planners wanted in their armoury.