Not About The Bikes

Car dominance is not compatible with traditional cities

Here’s an interesting tweet I saw recently:

Now I don’t think this means “We hate cars, and bikes are just the tool we use to fight our war on cars.” What it means is, primary reliance on the car is not compatible with traditional cities, and bikes are one of the best ways to get around without relying on the car.

Bikes are relatively cheap, portable, take up very little space, don’t use fuel or produce pollution, and get you a fair bit further than walking with relatively little work. I think Americans are so used to thinking of bikes as either toys or sporting equipment that we don’t really think of them as vehicles at all.

This is important. Bikes serve an important function in urban environments, between plain walking and relying on some sort of motorized vehicle—either cars or motorbikes/Vespas on the small end, or buses and trains or trams on the large end. In areas with some density but not enough for transit, the bike fills an important role in the transportation ecosystem.

I’d also say this: freedom of movement is not an abstraction, nor is it the freedom to drive anywhere with as little friction as possible. It’s the freedom to get to stuff and to move, and in an urban environment, those are best served not by the car but by other less intrusive, more space-efficient means.

You’ll see people who say in bad faith—or even believe in good faith—that urbanists oppose freedom of movement because we don’t like, or criticize, cars. The best read on this is that they’re so used to thinking of the car as mobility itself that they can’t hear criticism of cars or driving as anything other than a criticism of the freedom to move. So there’s an element of “What do you mean you don’t oppose freedom of movement, you just said you do!”

I’d also point out the fact that commerce is the first use of streets, after mobility, listed in that tweet. Streets are good for business—they’re public rights of way and gathering spaces, but they’re also commercial spaces. One of the most interesting things to think about, for me, is how orienting a place around cars can actually be bad for business.

You don’t want people to pass through; you want them to stop and spend money! And to get people to stop in a car-oriented landscape, you need things like giant signs, big driveways and parking lots, and sufficient distances between destinations. In other words, scaling commerce to the car gets you a landscape incompatible with traditional cities.

If you like the suburban commercial landscape—the discrete shopping centers and individual buildings, each with discrete entrances and parking—well, that’s okay. But the point is that that kind of built landscape essentially follows from everyday reliance on the car. It’s almost the tail wagging the dog. The traditional urban town/city pattern that so much of us actually like can’t just be conjured up; it also follows from reliance on means of transportation which promote proximity.

All of this is to say, “Those weird Europeans sure love their bikes!” is sort of missing what we’re looking at. It’s more accurate to say that they love their cities, and they seem to understand better than we do what sorts of vehicles and modes of movement work with them.

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Related Reading:

A Crash Can Be A Bash

Nuisance Or Amenity?

Parking Up The Wrong Tree

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