Biking and Urban Built Environment

Bicycles were invented in the early 1800s, and by 1890 there was a cycling boom in the United States, with thousands buying bicycles. In the era before cars, bikes were groundbreaking in their ability to connect people to places and resources that had previously been unreachable. The first roads throughout the country were originally created in order for bicycle riders to have smoother, safer rides. When cars were first introduced to American roads during the 1920s, they were met with intense backlash because people did not like how noisy, smelly, and dangerous they were. However, the automobile industry launched massive advertising campaigns to convince Americans that cars were an essential part of their daily lives. Meanwhile, industry lobbyists pushed local and federal legislators to craft laws and ordinances which cemented the idea that roads should be centered around cars. Car manufacturers managed to convince policy makers to implement publicly funded highways, crosswalks, and other top-down decisions which resulted in bikes being pushed off roads. 

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As cars were becoming the most popular form of transportation for Americans who could afford them, city planners began to restructure urban environments in order to accommodate automobile traffic. During the 1930s, racist attitudes were the norm among those in positions of power, and as a result the changes in city planning were aimed at improving life for white residents while discriminating against racial minorities. Highways were built through the areas of least resistance, which were often poor communities of color who were denied political agency. Entire neighborhoods were forced out of their homes to bulldoze space for roads. Additionally, racist practices such as redlining denied mostly black residents with mortgage loans for certain areas, further segregating most major US cities. The policies to reshape urban landscapes and transportation were fundamentally racist, and systematically denied BIPOC communities access to healthcare, nutritious foods, and education and employment opportunities. Additionally, discriminatory legislation directly exposed minority areas to environmental risk factors such as air and water pollution. After isolating non-white residents in areas deemed to be undesirable, urban planners refused to invest in infrastructure improvements in those neighborhoods. The results of this institutional racism in urban built environments persist to this day, as displayed by the racial wealth gap in American cities, food deserts, and underfunded health and education systems in low-income areas.

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Currently, gentrification in many of the biggest cities in our country is continuing to target poor and ethnically diverse communities. The reversal of “white flight” from cities has led to an influx of rich, mostly white residents into areas previously inhabited by minority residents. Gentrification represents a new form of environmental discrimination, as rising property costs drive BIPOC people out of the areas that they have lived in for generations. Under the guise of economic development, city planners raise property costs and incentivise new businesses to enter neighborhoods, raising the costs of living. Many communities of color have organized to push back against this trend, pointing out that cities only began investing in infrastructure improvements to entice affluent white professionals after decades of neglecting the communities that had lived there. In some areas, biking infrastructure has been seen as a symbol of gentrification because it is one of the tools city planners use to “improve” areas. In Portland, Oregon, a city praised for its extensive network of safe biking lanes, an analysis by Cameron Herrington and Ryan J. Dannthe found that increases in bike usage in neighborhoods were predicted by increases in the populations of white and highly educated residents. In other words, the success and growth of Portland’s biking community was driven at least in part by gentrification. Failing to include BIPOC community members in discussions regarding the physical layout of their neighborhoods can cause bike lanes to be seen as “white lanes of gentrification” as opposed to safe ways to increase access to resources. Therefore, it is vital that bicycle advocates understand the long history of racist urban policies and how they continue to play out in American cities. When decisions around cycling improvements are made without meaningful input from the people who currently live in those areas, they can understandably be seen as yet another example of legislators ignoring the needs of BIPOC people.

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