Local pro-bike blog Copenhagenize reports that the city is planning a series of super bicycle routes from the suburbs, for people who bike more than 10K to get to work. The idea is to create roads where people can ride their bicycles steadily at over 20 km per hour, without worrying that they'll have to deal with too much car traffic or with passing other bikes on narrow roads.

Copenhagenize writes:

The routes will be developed on the existing bike lanes but they will have a number of improved features, according to the City's vision:

- Smooth, even surfaces free of leaves, ice and snow.
- As direct as possible with no detours.
- Homogenous visual expression, for example, with signage and the trademark blue bike lanes through larger intersections.
- 'Service stations' with air and tools along the routes.
- Possibility to maintain a high speed and with sufficient width to overtake other cyclists.
- Safe and quick crossing priority for cyclists when they approach cross streets.
- Green Wave for cyclists through sections with frequent stop lights. [The Green Wave is in place on three main routes into Copenhagen already. Cycle 20 km/h and you hit green lights all the way.]

If the future of urban transport is the bicycle, and many city planners as well as energy experts argue that it is, then surely this kind of road represents the future of commuting. A similar plan is underway in the Danish city of Aarhus too.

via Copenhagenize

This scenario is part of an elaborate and whimsical futurist mapping project called Radiant Copenhagen. If you navigate around the Copenhagen city map created by people working on the project, you'll discover information about everything from bizarre new venereal diseases (spread by Fuck Sects of course) to a crucial research organization called the Center of Improbability and Invisibility.

Artist Kristoffer Ørum explains Radiant Copenhagen:

Anders Bojen, Kristoffer Ørum, Kaspar Bonnén and Rune Graulund have worked with a team of architects, artists, designers, engineers and musicians to create an alternate vision of Copenhagen, an imaginary future as a reaction to present day. All contributors share an interest in alternative realities and how these, through the internet and other media, play an increasing important role in our common understanding of the world . . . Using Google maps and Wiki technologies, the group has created a Copenhagen dressed in dystopian scenery and amusing attire.

You can navigate through the delightfully bizarre world of future Copenhagen using Google maps.

This is one of those delightful time-wasters that will actually make your brain explode with new ideas - and weird ones. You'll learn about everything from "bubble architecture," below, to the history of nano accidents in the city.

Check out Radiant Copenhagen. It's worth the trip.

[3XN via Trendir]