In other posts, I've pointed out that bike lanes and other bicycle-related infrastructure are not always received warmly by low-income or working-class people, or by people of color.
Bike lanes are often seen as paths to gentrification. While the income level and hue of a neighborhood may well change after one of those green ribbons winds down a street, we cannot, as at least one of your teachers has said, confuse coincidence with causation. (The same association is often made between art and the ways neighborhoods change: More than one commentator has referred to artists as the canaries in the coal mine.) Still, I can understand why someone who's just getting by would feel resentment when he or she sees a cyclist who seems to be having fun--even if said cyclist is riding to work.
Also, that cyclist is, as likely as not, to be white. Or, if he or she is not, he or she is, as often as not, an educated professional, and young. That last fact is even more important than one might realize: Gentrification often pushes out people who have been living in a neighborhood for decades--in some cases, their entire lives--and really have nowhere else to go.
One more thing: Nearly all planners and designers involved in building bike infrastructure are like the folks spinning down those lanes: white, with at least one university degree and from at least the middle class, if not a higher rung on the socio-economic ladder. Urban and transportation planning, it seems, are a bit like architecture: a difficult profession to enter if you're not already connected, in some way, to the people who are already in it. And, of course, it takes financial and other resources to, not only get the education required for such work, but to endure long periods at jobs that don't pay well. That is why, for example, most of the students in the college in which I teach are preparing to become nurses, dental hygenists and the like, if they're not studying business.
But today, in taking a slightly different route to work, I found yet another reason why poor, working-class and nonwhite people might fear and hate the arrival of a bike lane in their neighborhood.
As you might have guessed, those tall brick buildings to the left of the bike lane are projects (or what the British call "council flats"). Guess who lives in them?
Bike lanes are often seen as paths to gentrification. While the income level and hue of a neighborhood may well change after one of those green ribbons winds down a street, we cannot, as at least one of your teachers has said, confuse coincidence with causation. (The same association is often made between art and the ways neighborhoods change: More than one commentator has referred to artists as the canaries in the coal mine.) Still, I can understand why someone who's just getting by would feel resentment when he or she sees a cyclist who seems to be having fun--even if said cyclist is riding to work.
Also, that cyclist is, as likely as not, to be white. Or, if he or she is not, he or she is, as often as not, an educated professional, and young. That last fact is even more important than one might realize: Gentrification often pushes out people who have been living in a neighborhood for decades--in some cases, their entire lives--and really have nowhere else to go.
One more thing: Nearly all planners and designers involved in building bike infrastructure are like the folks spinning down those lanes: white, with at least one university degree and from at least the middle class, if not a higher rung on the socio-economic ladder. Urban and transportation planning, it seems, are a bit like architecture: a difficult profession to enter if you're not already connected, in some way, to the people who are already in it. And, of course, it takes financial and other resources to, not only get the education required for such work, but to endure long periods at jobs that don't pay well. That is why, for example, most of the students in the college in which I teach are preparing to become nurses, dental hygenists and the like, if they're not studying business.
But today, in taking a slightly different route to work, I found yet another reason why poor, working-class and nonwhite people might fear and hate the arrival of a bike lane in their neighborhood.
As you might have guessed, those tall brick buildings to the left of the bike lane are projects (or what the British call "council flats"). Guess who lives in them?
If you were one of them, how welcome would you feel on that bike lane?
Oh, and that ferry: It's nice. But, even with the location of that dock, one sees hardly a dark face on board.
By the way, just beyond the end of the lane, a new development is going up. If nothing else, it just might make the bike lane seem welcoming, by comparison anyway, to the folks in the projects.
