This just posted on The Dish:
Eric Peterson considers the role of gentrification in pro-biking campaigns:
[T]he rise in urban biking in the past few years is directly correlated with the return of upper middle class whites to the city, and a direct appeal on the part of municipal governments to attract more of them. While many, such as [New York City Mayor] Bloomberg, have rationalized the implementation of bike infrastructure as a way of supplementing public transit, it’s not hard to find an ulterior motive. As the urban planning blogger Surly Urbanist has argued recently, there is a direct connection between bike infrastructure and gentrification: “Bicycling’s growing popularity over the past decade or so is due to the fact that a preferred demographic has now pushed for it.”
More here.
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While it may be part of gentrification to push for it, I will point out that for many the bicycle remains a primary form of transportation if your income is not great. So those of us who are not part of that upper middle class who bike for pleasure get to use those same bike paths to get around cheaply.
This seems to be a lot more true for folks who are students or underemployed and come from more affluent backgrounds. Long term poor people, in predominantly low income neighborhoods, are a lot less likely to bike. This seems to gradually changing, at least for low income men, but there’s a long way to go before their biking equals that of “the creative class.” This is a reason why some poor neighborhoods in places like Portland have opposed the installation of bike lanes, which they see as indicators, if not tools, of gentrification. Cycling advocates should grapple with this dynamic, not just deny it.
In the U.S. context at least, it would be more accurate to say that bicycles have the potential to provide transportation for low income people.
Why not just say: cycling infrastructure has is another face of the decades long urban renewal in major cities across the world.
-has
As denilou69 aludes, I’ve never understood the “bike snob” critique. That somehow cheap, human-powered is more ‘elite’ than high capital cost, high maintenance cost, depreciating consumable.
Of course urban (street) design is still key.