Bicycles. Harbingers of Gentrification? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14724485
'Rightly or wrongly, gentrification is often seen as a process that arrives on two wheels. From Red Hook in Brooklyn to London Fields, fixed-gear bike-wielding young professionals have flocked to former industrial lots and waterfronts.'

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016 ... rification

'...the growth of city cycling is not purely utilitarian. Among what urban theorist Richard Florida calls “the creative class”, the bicycle is a potent symbol of identity and status. And more bikes, it seems, means more well-paid knowledge economy jobs. “Cycling to work is positively associated with the share of creative-class jobs and negatively associated with working-class jobs...

...Consequently, local hostility to cycling infrastructure has often been a proxy for wider anger at gentrification. In Portland, Oregon in 2011, a proposed bike lane through a historic African American neighborhood led to opposition from local residents. In 2013, a prominent church opposed a similar scheme in downtown Washington DC.'

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The thing about cycling is that is not really a transportation alternative. It can't work for most people. Extreme variations in velocity and mass within the same roadways guarantee unacceptable levels of danger.
#14728175
It used to be that iced coffee was a harbinger of gentrification.

Now I just make my own, and my kitchen hasn't been gentrified.

Bicycles would replace cars as the primary private transportation mode if we had competent, survival-based governance. Which we don't.

Our governments are NOT working towards long-term survival at all. We can't even imagine bicycles being anything other than "hipster" alternatives to bland, obese, suburban normalcy.
#14728269
Bikes are viable for young, fit, single, childless people who live in a city centre with bonus points for a local environment that is flat and has clement weather, but that isn't everyone not by a long mile.

If nothing else the carrying capacity of bikes is negligible which means they are all but useless for goods and for most people's needs. Bikes are orders of magnitude cheaper than a car but yet the majority of people prefer cars over bikes. Bikes are viable for a significant minority, autos are viable for everyone.

I'm an aging smoker, with a wife and child who lives in rural situation, 9 mile drive to work, in a job that is 90% driving in somewhat hilly area prone to precipitation.
#14728284
Bikes are also viable for the elderly, for people who may not be fit, for married people, and for those of us with children. They can be used in inclement weather and are able to go up and down hills.

The carrying capacity of a bicycle is greatly improved with the use of a trailer, making it suitable for goods and most people's needs.

In short, bikes are viable for almost everyone, but most of us choose to use cars and make life choices based on the idea that we are going to use cars. We then turn around and use those choices as a rationale for using cars.
#14728289
I'm not sold. I'm not cycling up and down hills, with a trailer :eek: , 9 miles to the nearest shop taking hours of travel time when I can get in my car and do the same trip effortlessly in minutes. Cycles have niche utility. Cars are for everyone, even those that can't drive because the extra carrying capacity means those that can drive can share that ability with those that can't, hence buses and taxis.

Cars are just too good to pass up, they are worth the extra expense.
#14728301
Hey, feel free to not ride a bike. I enjoy riding a bicycle becase I can get where I need to go inexpensively and get some exercise at the same time.

Yesterday I rode 18km to my skate practice, and then 18km back. That is about 11 miles each way. With all my skate gear, and an extra bag for my winter clothes as there is already snow on the ground up here.

But I am not trying to sell you on the idea of a bicycle. I am explaining how bicycles do not just have niche utility. I understand why you believe they do, as you are generalizing from your own experience, but your experience is not universal.

Cars may be for you, as you have set up your life that way. For the many people in my neighbourhood who cannot afford cars, cars have niche utility only for those who can afford it.

For me, cars are not worth the extra expense. I do not wish to pay for insurance, parking, gas, repairs, cleaning and maintenance, or the extra medical costs of being a motorist. Nor do I like to be dependent on a complicated system of gas stations and producers for my transportation. I am more of a redneck when it comes to things like that.

As for the topic, bicycles are often used in poor neghbourhoods, not very much in lower middle class neighbourhoods (as there is a whole thing about not wanting to look poor) and then get more popular as you move up the economic ladder. The ultra rich, of course, do not care if they look poor and also know that they do not look poor when riding a carbon fiber bike. So, I would say that bicycles are correlated with a certain type of gentrification.
#14728375
It's true that many of us now live in dysfunctional car-dependent suburbs that were designed to make us drive everywhere. Serving these areas by bike also has to involve rail.
Bike on rail.

None of the other "complaints" on this page hold water and POD has revealed how easy it is to prick them like a hot air balloon full of car-oil-construction propaganda.

I'd also like to point out that China has always had millions of cyclists in their cities, and sure enough, China has gentrified a lot in the last few decades. But the gentrification of China (increased wealth, factory overtime, industrial psyche) has involved LESS bicycles.

In other words, China's development has demonstrated how unrestricted personal wealth will kill us all with pollution and wars for resources.

Rich countries growing up and de-motorizing themselves, on the other hand, would be a harbinger of survival-oriented governance.

If we're not trying to survive with our current model of governance, why do we even have governance?
#14728514
When peddle power can drive: fire engines, ambulances, police vehicles, military vehicles (peddle powered main battle tanks!), freight trains, mass transit, inter-city courier vehicles, carry disabled people and the infirm, farm tractors and so much else then it may be said to have universal utility instead of niche utility. The combustion engine can and does do all of the above and if it didn't we would have to once again conscript the poor old horse from his leisurely life as a mount for hunters and other recreational riders back into the grinding drudgery he suffered in yesteryear as civilisation's engine.

Hipsters need to wake up and look outside the microscopic bubble of their own pointless existence before pronouncing on these things.

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#14728546
SolarCross wrote:When peddle power can drive: fire engines, ambulances, police vehicles, military vehicles (peddle powered main battle tanks!), freight trains, mass transit, inter-city courier vehicles, carry disabled people and the infirm, farm tractors and so much else then it may be said to have universal utility instead of niche utility. The combustion engine can and does do all of the above and if it didn't we would have to once again conscript the poor old horse from his leisurely life as a mount for hunters and other recreational riders back into the grinding drudgery he suffered in yesteryear as civilisation's engine.


Are you deliberately confusing the vehicles of emergency personnel and first responders with personal transportation?

Please note that ambulances, fire trucks and police cars are more effective when there are less cars on the road. Do you think that these vehicles get stuck behind bicycles? Are bicycles responsible for all those traffic jams?

Hipsters need to wake up and look outside the microscopic bubble of their own pointless existence before pronouncing on these things.


And now you seem to be confusing hipsters with poor people, those who cannot have driver's licenses due to medical issues, and people,who live in densely urbanised areas.

Oh, and you mean "pedal" instead of "peddle".

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