Bicycle Urbanism
What: Urban Design (Concept)
Date: Published January 2021
Commissioned by: A+U Journal (Japan)
In collaboration with: Raphael Laude and Adam Lubinsky
In its 200-year history in New York City, the bicycle has offered empowerment and liberation to many diverse groups. Even after significant expansion since the early 2000s, however, current cycling infrastructure remains unevenly distributed, serving central, more affluent neighborhoods, while leaving outer, typically lower-income, neighborhoods without access to this affordable means of transit. The research-led project proposes a new infrastructure that brings cycling to these outer neighborhoods. It seizes outdated infrastructure that once tore communities apart, returning it to these communities as an asset. Read full text here.
Where do cycling and affordability overlap?
Since 2002, the majority of New York’s network expansion has been focused in and around the city’s core. These neighborhoods — Lower Manhattan and Northwest Brooklyn (Zone 1) — tend to have high incomes and short commutes. Cycling is convenient in these areas and proportionately high rates of cycling mode share. The residents of neighborhoods just outside these core areas (Zone 2) have lower incomes on average, but still bike, as a result of proximity and access to infrastructure.
Photos: Amina Hassen