How do neighborhoods get picked?

1) the auto as necessity for working class who have been priced out of the city core
2) the perception of bicyclist as part of a bicycling community

i think the issue around the auto as a necessity is ripe for another post. i’m digging into it now. for me personally, i couldn’t afford to live in the city if i had a car payment. that was one of many reasons that we sold our car more than a year ago. taking money from the car meant having money for the mortgage.

as for the bike community, you’ve tapped into something very interesting to me. motorists do not typically see themselves as part of the ‘motoring community’ and i don’t believe that bicycles should be any different. you see, that’s my point as it originally related to some of the significant differences between the u.s. and our european partners. in my opinion, you shouldn’t need to feel compelled to identify yourself by how you get from a to b. i do not identify myself as a cyclist, but rather a person who rides a bike. and i used to be one of those chaps that invested way to much in my campy groupo and spandex.

for a myriad of reasons, if you ride a bike in this town, many folks who don’t ride see you as a cyclist -that is, part of a cycling community. i think the bike can exist as an equalizer if it is seen for what it really is: transportation. yes, it can be a bond as well (as with car clubs), but I believe those are effective secondary and tertiary identifiers. most folks who possess a car simply ‘have a car’; they don’t start out desperately wanting to be part of the kia spectra owners car club. what they really want is a way to move their family around.

i think the difference between perception of motoring versus cycling comes from two very important places:

1) the dominance of the automobile (thanks in part to legislation and industry)
2) the bicycling industry’s focus on sport

american cycling culture benefits from –and is harmed by– the trickle down affect of bicycle racing and cycling as a hobby. i thank the racing industry for helping to make great bike technology available and eventually affordable. i dislike it for propelling the perception of cycling as mere hobby or sport. it has the potential to be so much more important to the future sustainability of our world.

as for china, they’re experiencing a cycle that we already experienced. because of our early start, we’re now the largest polluting nation on the planet as it relates to automotive emissions. china will top us once more of its citizens start driving down roads with even more lax emissions controls than our own. but we can’t control that. what we can do is change our behavior and help turn the tide while other nations hopefully benefit from better technology than when america started its great automotive climate assault.

rich issues, steve… very rich. more fodder for future posts!

Still, the crowd was considerably whiter than many of the neighborhoods it moved through, which some neighbors found unnerving.

It is a difficult concept to grasp, but it parallels what we see on the international stage with China: Who are we, as (relatively) wealthy white people, to tell poor people of color they shouldn’t have economic development or drive cars?

At the bottom of the economic rung, car ownership often means the difference between being able to hold a job and being chronically unemployed.

So we have a conundrum of trying to cut carbon emissions in ways that don’t hold back the economic development of half the world’s population.

I think bikes are a great way to do this, but try telling the man in China, who can finally afford a car, to get back on his bike.

Likewise in Portland, the bike community has a lot of work to reach out to non-white communities. To many of them, thousands of whites on bikes in their neighborhood doesn’t augur a new day environmentally, it just looks like another sign of gentrification and their own marginalization.

I was at the Toward Carfree Cities closing event on Friday night, and met people from all over the country who look to Portland as a model for urban planning when it comes to bike-ability. A big shout out to all the folks at Carfree Portland who did an amazing job all week long and really represented our fair city well!

The most irritating aspect of Portland bike culture is the nuts who proclaim revolution and position cycling as a “movement” against [cause du jour]. They make the most noise and get the most press, which turns off a lot of people who would otherwise find bicycling to be an effective and enjoyable way to get around town.

Sunday Parkways was a great way to open the doors to those people. It’s really refreshing to see families, friends, the young and the old, rich and poor, hipsters, yuppies, and everyone in between rolling through the neighborhoods and hanging out in the parks.