This is one essay from a collection Quinn Gregory (M.Arch ’25) wrote about his time in Europe after receiving the Pratt School of Architecture William “Bill” Menking Travel Award. Another will appear in The Architect’s Newspaper, the publication Bill Menking founded. Quinn’s complete zine, Away from the Desk, Into the Streets, will be printed and distributed this month, compiling all of his essays, sketches, and photographs. The William “Bill” Menking Travel Fund is intended for penultimate-year Graduate Students in the School of Architecture who wish to travel for academic or internship purposes outside the United States.
Bridging the Gap: Building Momentum for Safer Streets
Two years ago, Secretary of Transportation, ‘Mayor Pete’ Buttigieg posed a challenge to American mayors: “Many of you, for example, are rightly focused on confronting the scourge of gun violence. I want to remind you that the loss of life in traffic crashes in our communities is almost identical in its proportions.”
His words felt personal to me – ever since I’d worked as a bicycle messenger in New York City’s streets and my coworkers were dealt horrific consequences as the result of poor street design. Those experiences shaped my path to graduate school where I am now pursuing a Master of Architecture at Pratt Institute.
Last summer, with the support of Pratt’s William ‘Bill’ Menking Travel Award, I explored the idea of urban design across Europe, meeting with architects, planners, bike messengers and academics. In moving through each city on bike and foot, a new piece to the puzzle was revealed with each mile.
Before arriving there, I met with Dr. Rodrigo Ordonhas Viseu Cardoso, an architect and professor at TU Delft. He asked me a simple question that framed my trip: “What comes first? Well-planned infrastructure, then behavioral changes or behavioral changes first, then infrastructure?” I paused and thought before he continued, “Well-planned infrastructure before behavioral change could lead to infrastructure without users.”
The idea followed me to Madrid where I rode with veteran-messenger Ivan LaPausa. With 25 years of experience and having competed in world championship messenger races all over the world, LaPausa was an expert witness to the development of bicycle infrastructure in Madrid, as well as a great tour guide. I followed him as he worked, snapping photos and chatting. Ten years ago, he said “biking had no visibility,” meaning there were very few cyclists on the streets. Today, the growing number of cyclists benefit from an expanding infrastructure in new urban revitalization projects such as the ‘Nuevo Norte’ project going on in the north of the city. LaPausa’s experience gave me a key insight: as more people bike, they not only use more infrastructure and perhaps become advocates for more of it. Their very existence starts a feedback loop.
In Girona, Spain, David Trimble, founder of the Red Hook Crit, a famous race series that he ran all over the U.S. and Europe, introduced me to Bici-Bus, a program where children bike to school in a critical mass, escorted by police or chaperones. Programs like these expose the next generation to the benefits of cycling while ensuring safety and feasibility for parents and community.
By the time I got to Copenhagen, the mutual reinforcement between infrastructure and behavior felt undeniable. Buttigieg had also been to Copenhagen recently and left me with a quote I wanted to investigate; “If you look at pictures of, let’s say, Copenhagen in the ‘70s you realize very quickly that today’s bicycle culture there is not the result of some immutable Nordic affinity for bicycles. It’s the result of decisions that they made over the years. Because if you look at those older pictures, you see a place as unfriendly to bicycles as many American neighborhoods would be today.”
On my second day there, I rode with Carina Linnebjerg, a rookie messenger working for a notorious messenger company By-Expressen, which has had a champion at the Cycle Messenger World Championship for the past seven consecutive years. With her red curly hair coming out from her white helmet, she rode fast through the bike path-laden streets in a herky-jerky style atop her Omnium Cargo bike. She frequently stopped to check her phone for messages and directions, but she was hard to keep up with when she got moving.
We rode throughout Copenhagen, into mushroom farms, amusement parks, retail stores and retirement homes. Toward the end of the day, we were heading back into the city from Freetown Christiania – a former squatters commune – when we rode up to a at-first-drawn drawbridge.
We paused amongst other cyclists and pedestrians as a boat passed by. I noticed there were no cars nearby, and not even a road. It wasn’t just a low-traffic area: it was infrastructure designed entirely around non-motorized transit. I was in awe.
The following day, I went to Cykelslangen, or Bicycle Snake bridge, where similarly a pedestrian and cyclist only bridge weaved through a semi-urban center. The Snake bridge, completed by architects Dissing+Weitling, in 2014, transformed an old industrial part of the city into a celebrated monument of visibility for cyclists. The bridge follows an s-curve, giving the cyclists not the line-of-best fit, but the scenic route.
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![Bicycle riders on the winding Cykelslangen, or Bicycle Snake bridge, in Copenhagen.]()
Cykelslangen, or Bicycle Snake bridge, in Copenhagen. Completed by architects Dissing+Weitling, in 2014. -
![Copenhagen, Denmark city streets with blurred bicyclist in the foreground.]()
Copenhagen city streets.
The elegance of the bridges serve as a testament to Copenhagen’s decades-long investment in cycling culture. They weren’t just practical solutions; they were symbols of respect for the cyclists. Infrastructure like this doesn’t just facilitate biking – it dignifies it. It tells cyclists, we see you, we value you.
Returning to New York in my mind, I would often wonder how these projects may translate. Of course many of these cities’ bike infrastructure was decades ahead of New York’s, but did it matter?
I thought of the summer in 2019, when 14 cyclists were killed in New York City’s streets. That ‘summer of death,’ as local media had called it, pushed my coworkers and I to discuss and organize for improved infrastructure. Following each tragedy, group messages would erupt with warnings of police staking out busy intersections, giving tickets to cyclists. Simultaneously, bike lanes appeared on 11th Avenue, the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere. The city’s response felt tangled: cyclists were both a problem in their behavior but also to be accommodated for safety. With each mile pedaled that fall and winter, I tried to make sense of it.
Through my research, I’ve come to understand that infrastructure and behavior are not opposing forces but are two sides of the same coin. Cycling culture has a snowball effect: as more people brave the streets, they encourage others to do the same. At some rate, these cyclists are ambassadors of change. At another rate, they become advocates and share their time with organizations that will lobby City Hall for change and improved street design.
The bridges in Copenhagen were not inevitable, they were chosen. By prioritizing cyclists, New York too can create a city where safe streets are the norm and not just blips on a disorganized plan. Maybe progress is not inevitable, but it is certainly not out of reach. It is the result of countless daily decisions, of people working together to turn inertia into momentum.
Read more about Quinn Gregory’s pursuits in “Graduate Architecture Student Quinn Gregory Named 2025 Fulbright Semifinalist” on Pratt News.