In his new book, James Longhurst asks: "Why are most American cities still so ill-prepared to handle cyclists?"
The history professor answers questions during a recent stop on his book tour to promote Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road.
The road is a shared resource. "It’s easy to forget it’s shared between many different users, and that’s the only way the public road had really existed for millennia before one user type became more successful than others."
He uses a model of path dependency to analyze policy. "Cities are the debris fields of history. They’re the leftover physical monuments of decisions that were made and not made in the past." This model offers us the freedom to politically evolve. "[Decisions] may be poured in concrete, but they’re not set in stone."
He touches upon the history of Golden Ages for bicycles in the United States, but notes that the current bike boom is more than a fad because the economics of transportation has fundamentally changed. "Even as gas prices come down, we can’t afford the infrastructure for cars. It doesn’t get cheaper the more of it we build."
Longhurst believes that a change in the perception of who uses bicycles is critically important to changing the politics around bicycling. "If you can make the user group mainstream, so people in cars look at them and think ‘that’s us,’ then voters and taxpayers will see the users simply as the public."
FULL STORY: Bike Battles: Why We Debate Who Owns the Road
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
LA's Top Parks, Ranked
TimeOut just released its list of the top 26 parks in the L.A. area, which is home to some of the best green spaces around.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.