Bike equity
Not local, but relevant to a lot of conversations here: In this CityLab interview urban anthropologist Adonia Lugo challenges some of the ideas of bike advocates -- specifically the focus on building bike infrastructure -- and how they relate to equity for different sorts of people.
(We've thought about this issue a bit with regard to the South End Connector in Albany. How it can it be an amenity for people in the neighborhood as well as a connector for people riding the bike trails?)
[CityLab]
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Comments
Remember folks, there is ALWAYS an oppressor, there is ALWAYS a victim.
... said Herbert on Jul 24, 2018 at 5:35 PM | link
Can someone explain to me how people want to invest in communities, make communities safer, improve housing, decrease crime, generally make the community more desirable to live in and yet generally hate the outcome of these positive changes; "gentrification"? Within the linked article it seems to me like the woman talking has linked economic development with some sort of sociological theory, and the two are incompatible with each other outside of error free thought experiments. There was a lot of talk about issues, but not a lot of concrete or even half-formed ideas about how to actually go about improving the situation as the woman sees it, and I would definitely disagree with the assertion that locals are the 'experts' when it comes to much of anything, especially urban planning.
... said Ra on Jul 25, 2018 at 8:24 AM | link
Ra, gentrification is a dirty word because it means that you are not actually improving communities on the large scale, only the small scale. If the people you are trying to serve are forced out, the community you are trying to serve still exists, just somewhere else, and the problems aren't solved, just moved. You had a very insightful comment about changing community attitudes on the July 23 morning blend post, which got to the heart of it: a community is its people. It's not the houses, stores, sidewalks, and bike lanes.
... said -B on Jul 26, 2018 at 8:05 AM | link
@-B that makes a lot of sense to me. I guess I'm just concerned because how do you improve a community without giving what I see as individual economic motivation to leave the community and therefore encourage gentrification? For instance, let's say in an effort to improve a local neighborhood, the city comes through and renovates the local area and increases police patrols to control crime. Over time, these changes will cause property values to rise, which could incentivize individuals to sell their homes at a higher value, making themselves a cozy profit and perhaps allowing them to move into a better home than the one they had in a different area. Over time, the community as we know it today would be totally gone. I'm not an expert on gentrification, so I'll have to do some more reading on the topic, but maybe there are ways to better a local community without providing economic incentives for gentrification.
... said Ra on Jul 27, 2018 at 8:14 AM | link