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Joyride tells the story of how Portland, Oregon got started on the path to becoming the Copenhagen, the Amsterdam, the bicycling mecca of the United States. It focuses on the years from 1993 to 1999 when author Mia Birk worked as the city’s Bicycle Program Coordinator. Portland in the early 1990s was car-centered like most [...]
“When you design streets solely for cars, people die as a result. The underlying conditions that are responsible for those deaths are rarely or never challenged. The victims often get blamed for their own injuries or deaths.”i
The above quote refers to the case of Raquel Nelson, a US Atlanta-area mother who [...]
Book Review by Kelly Nelson
There is always room for a book about bicycles as transportation in North America so kudos to editor Amy Walker and publisher New World Library for putting out this book where the words lycra, competition, racing and Lance Armstrong do not appear in the index. The contributors [...]
“The automobile as a death dealing instrument was unanimously decided upon as the greatest present day menace to public safety.” These words were not written in 1960s Holland or 1970s New York City but in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1920.
This fascinating book chronicles the early chapters of the [...]
Stop Signs is probably the most comprehensive assessment of the power of the automobile I’ve yet read. It’s a history lesson on the car, and its rapid evolution and a field guide to Homo Automotivus. As the subtitle suggests, it focuses on the economic, social and environmental, but also neatly summarises topics like health, psychology, [...]
If I could time travel into the past, I’d like to visit the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan where Mexico City stands today. I’d also like to be a guest in a Viennese parlor in 1793 listening to Beethoven play the piano. And I’d like to spend time in an American city after the bicycle had [...]
How can North American cities be designed to reduce carbon emissions? The answer, according to architecture professor Patrick Condon, lies in the past, 1880 to 1945 to be specific. That’s when multiple North American cities were designed as streetcar cities that were “walkable, transit accessible, and virtually pollution-free while still [...]
Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives
Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 254 pages, ISBN 9780230618138
If you are solidly or fervently in the carfree camp, this book might exasperate you. Despite the edgy first word in the title, this book is not edgy – it’s gentle. While it [...]
“Mainstream” may not be the best word to describe David Byrne, yet when a man best known for his role in a rock band writes a book – albeit not completely or for many even sufficiently – about cycling and the infrastructure needed to support it, one is tempted to believe that the issue has [...]
Edited by Jim Conley and Arlene Tigar McLaren
Ashgate Publishing, 2009, 258 pages, ISBN 9780754677727
Car Troubles is a collection of 13 academic essays, all but two written by professors at universities in Canada, UK, USA and New Zealand. The editors make a distinction between the system that supports car travel (vehicles, roads, gas suppliers) and the [...]
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