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I was in Valencia (Spain) a few weeks back. This city is one of the most ideal cities I have been to for cycling; flat, perfect climate, riverbed running right through the middle of the city, spacious roads and high density. One of the inhabitants told me they dedicated cycling lanes a year back or so. That was visible: They had painted bicycle lanes right over roads & pedestrian areas. I guess when the Valencian people start to see how much fun cycling ones life makes, Valencia will become the cycling capital of the world soon enough.

Berlin has quite some traits for a good cycling city as well. A flat geography really helps here, along with a willing population.

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Having wide streets where you can set side space for bicycle lanes also helps. After WW2, Berlin was in ruins, and the city was never built up to the density of many other European cities. The Soviets, in particular, were particularly fond of wide, open spaces. (The earlier Prussian kings also liked wide avenues they could march their soldiers through.) Berlin is definitely a great city to bike in.

The major factor here is Berlin's street width, which was chosen to be 22m by law in 1862 for fire safety reasons, much wider than other german cities. Consequently during WW2, Berlin proved to be a problem for allied incendiary bombs. At some point they were even building a to scale model city in the desert (Dugway Proving Ground) for testing various methods of igniting fire storms.

> Berlin, however, would “prove more difficult than most other German cities”, the leading incendiary expert Horatio Bond avowed before the national commission for armament research of the USA. “The building quality is higher, and the single blocks are better separated from each other.” As the tests at the Dugway Proving Ground showed, is “was hardly to be expected that the flames would jump unhindered from one building to the next”.[1]

[1] http://www.principality-of-sealand.ch/pdf/sealandbrief0503e....

I never knew this.

And I heard plenty of stories about the Berlin air raids from my father.

Berlin Actually survived the war relatively intact, compared to, for example, Cologne.

Even in places where every second house was destroyed, street layouts remained unchanged. Mitte, Kreuzberg. Neukölln, Wedding: all These suburbs are mostly unchanged. Karl-Marx-Street was renamed twice, but was originally build at today’s width.

One of the problems with biking in Berlin are actually the cobblestone roads in many residential areas.

Spain has been very much a car centric country but over the last years few cities have been pushing a transformation to become bike friendly. The biggest transformation I have witnessed is in Seville: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-cycli...

If the cycling commute is flat, it has to be long to get decent exercise, because you have to apply a flat-out effort and you cover a lot of ground. If my bike commute were flat, I'd prefer to be some 14 miles from work rather than the current 7. Or else I would have to run it (more often).

To me, what would make an area ideal for cycling (if it has good roads and such) is: dry climate. No rain, no snow.

7 miles isn't much on a bike, but anyone riding 14 miles 5 days a week should be in great shape.

14 mph is a decent clip, whereas 20 mph is constant exertion. I'd hate my commute to be a hour long both ways and at 14 miles, that's what the average person is going to hit.

Damn, 12 weeks into bike commuting 12mi r/t and I gained close to 10lbs!

Do you mean 10lbs of fat? If that's the case, watch your diet, 10lbs in 12 weeks you are eating something averaging 370kcal above your needs per day, with biking (and assuming you are a man and don't do any other kind of workout) it means you are eating between 3300-3800kcal/day, that's a lot if you don't do hours of sports or heavy weightlifting.

Not sure, but I was mostly joking. I mean, it was true, and my diet had not changed from when I was more sedentary, but I've ratcheted things down quite a bit since then with careful meal tracking and even more exercise (130mi/week on the bike, 18 mi/week running, plus strength training and core training).

Most people don't cycle to get exercise, they cycle to get to where they need to be.

People often seem to miss this. In many ways, cycling is a terrible form of exercise precisely because it is such an efficient mode of transport.

You can burn 700-800 calories riding for 20 miles or about 1 1/2 hours.

I wouldn't walk that much (hours of walking) or run that much (a lot harder on the body), so to me it's really great exercise.

That's also why I find kazinator's post a bit exaggerated. That dude's burning through a lot of calories every week. You can eat a lot of ice cream (personal experience) and still lose weight if you're doing 14 miles every day.

Not denying that moving limbs is good for you! I also love cycling, which is a very important factor. I'm just saying that minute for minute, you spend more calories on inefficient modes of transport such as running or swimming or rowing or lifting heavy junk, so if your primary concern is maximising exercise in as little time as possible, that's the first place to look.

As someone who gets repetitive strain injuries from running and isn't a great swimmer cycling is a God send. I can go biking 7 days a week. If i need a blow out then i push a harder gear without dropping cadence... Or i do tabata.

Wouldn't being a bad (assuming you mean in the sense of inefficient) swimmer make it a good form of exercise?

Possibly, if i could get myself you swim more than 500m before giving up from boredom/dislike of drinking chlorine water.

I'd say that cycling is an ideal way of burning fat. With a bit of training you can easily spend a whole day on a bike without risk of overuse injuries.

Most people exercise at a relatively high intensity which mostly burns carbs. Great if you want a cardio workout. Not good if you need to burn fat.

I'm Dutch. The Netherlands is one of the most bicycle-dense countries in the world, and we have a, well, less than ideal climate to say the least. Rain, wind or snow really isn't that much of an issue when you have the right outfit.

As the scandinavian saying goes, "there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes".

Of course it can be hard to know/find good clothes when you have not grown up in such a culture.

If you live in a hilly city then snow and ice are pretty bad for cycling even if you are wearing the right clothes! Rain is fine though.

you can ride fat bike

ride a heavy fat steel bike with both front and back suspension and low tyre pressure and tyre treading for slowing the speed. Sit upright and keep the seat position low for inefficient pedalling.

good luck Riding a skiny tired racing bike in the snow when compared to a fat tired MTB

Both will suck ass.

If the snow cover isn't very thick (just a couple of inches on top of road) a thin tire will cut through it better to get to the road.

There is likely ice under that snow so you need studded tires like these:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/ca/en/schwalbe-marathon-w...

Note they come in various widths: down to 35mm (commuting road bike size) to 2 inches (MTB).

I would take these in the 40mm width over the other sizes for commuting in the snow.

My bike commute is only 5km one way, but it helped me a lot losing 10kgs of weight and developing good overall fitness and even some visible leg muscles. I try to go at a fast pace though, i agree that when you drive normally there is not a lot of effort involved on a 20 minute commute.

But cycling commute isn't about exercising, it's about commute. I live in Stockholm, it's cold, it's wet and not as flat as Berlin, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, etc., even then I bike to work even during winter because it's fun and a good way to get around the city, the exercise is just a bonus for me after biking 30+ km in a day because I had to go places.

If you want more exercise, don't run red lights. Not trying to accuse anyone, just saying. The stop-and-go makes it much more exhausting.

> I guess when the Valencian people start to see how much fun cycling ones life makes, Valencia will become the cycling capital of the world soon enough.

Beijing and Amsterdam can probably make a better claim to that title. Valencia is on the right track though and I hope their project succeeds and will last.

Or Copenhagen where 62 percent bike to work, 21 percent take metro, bus or train, 8 percent walk, and only 9 percent drive a car to work.

Just chiming in to say Valencia is LOVELY!!!! Such a fantastic, cheap, beautiful, beachy place to be.

Is it someplace you'd recommend living for a few months? From the US, always looking for new, interesting places to work remote from.

Absolutely. It's a beautiful place and lots of very friendly people. Another place that you probably wouldn't catch on to from abroad is Croatia, the coast there is a great and still relatively cheap place to set up for a couple of months - or years, it tends to stick.

Thank you!

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