Kampala Bicyclists Gaining Recognition

A recent news story from Kampala, Uganda shows how city officials are making the important shift from trying to ignore cyclists to recognizing that most of their citizens want to bike.

This video of the story starts with the worn-out assumption that only poor people ride bicycles. But as readers of this blog know, a bicycle is often a rider’s ticket straight out of poverty. The video gets right into that with an owner of a bicycle transport business. This business man shows that not only has his bicycle business given him comfortable income and paid for his children’s education costs, he is healthy and fit because of it.

We also get to meet Amanda Ngabirano, a One Street Advisor currently serving as Secretary on our board of directors. She emphasizes that people shouldn’t have to pay bus and taxi fares just to move around. She shows that by investing in bicycle infrastructure so that anyone feels comfortable riding, cities will be providing a free transportation choice for their citizens. Bicycling will also keep them healthy, lowering health costs.

The story ends with an uplifting interview with a city official who is genuinely enthusiastic about their new bicycle investments, which include major bicycle provision pilot projects in downtown Kampala.

I recommend taking the four minutes to watch this uplifting story of a city that will soon become a model for bicycle transportation provisions.

Sue

Solving Social Equity for the Bicycle Movement

Over the past few years, some U.S. bicycle advocacy organizations have been grappling with concerns over social equity in our movement. Just recognizing that there is a problem with equity in bicycle programs is an enormous and admirable step, especially for national and bike industry organizations who have always been detached from the local level.

It’s easy to get caught up in our own program goals and not recognize that we may be leaving whole sectors of communities out because of location, age, income level, culture, or ability. That’s why One Street included social equity in our mission at our very start, so we could never forget. We’ve also gathered a few worthy resources on our Social Equity page, but it remains quite sparse.

Unfortunately, most of the recent attempts at the national level miss the mark that will actually solve the problem. Their detachment shows through their platitudes and jargon. Bicycle organizations are not alone in doing a poor job with this. Here’s an example, written by a national center that claims to be an expert on social inclusion as they attempt to teach a national bicycle organization what they know: Five Things the Bike Movement Can Do Now to Move Toward Racial Equity. Here are my concerns about each:

• #1 Interrogate Root Cause of Disparities – They tell us to ask “why” five times. To whom? When we find five different pet peeves, do we go racing after solutions for each?

• #2 Lift up Leadership of Color in Your Movement – Why would you choose a leader based on their skin color? Isn’t that the very thing that the civil rights movement has always combatted?

• #3 Reframe the Message – Good idea, but their approach leads to jargon that I don’t even understand, let alone someone not yet interested in bicycling.

• #4 Engage with Communities – I thought I’d agree with this one because, as you’ll read below, the solution centers on knowing your community (neighborhood, town, or city), but again it drifts into meaningless jargon muddying the definition of community.

• #5 Share Power and Resources – It claims “plenty of ways” but opts again for a paragraph of jargon rather than helpful solutions.

Other national bicycle organizations or bike companies twist the concept of social equity to sell their programs such as protected bike lanes (which should be assumed to provide equal benefits to anyone) or bike share programs (which will never serve low-income riders).

I find the jargon and platitudes to be worse than the thinly veiled sales pitches because the reports and articles that result from these detached efforts are heavily funded and then promoted as “groundbreaking.” Anyone frustrated by seeing only one sector of their community riding bikes would be thrilled to find such a report. Instead, we find notes from endless discussions and surveys that always end with a fixation on skin color or assumed gender.

These useless attempts have only heightened the frustration at the local level. A recent article I posted about late last year reveals the level of frustration, not just from local bike advocates, but those who have had the misfortune to have worked on these reports.

To even start on a solution for our own communities (meaning neighborhood, town, or city), we first have to understand that any discussion of social equity derails as soon as we attempt to categorize people we see as different from ourselves and thus not equal. Such categorizing is different from recognizing unique qualities. For instance, young individuals could bring welcome energy. Old individuals are sure to have important experiences to share. Individuals from various cultures can offer new ideas. Individuals with disabilities can show able-bodied people what they struggle with.

The categorization I’m warning against is just a short misstep away from recognizing the value of individuals. Instead, it leaps to the assumption that all people with that trait will bring that particular value or, even worse, that particular complaint about bicycling. If you do take the time to read some of those misguided reports you’ll find far too many assumptions about “women,” “black people,” and “Latinos.”

To clarify, there are some excellent local bicycle organizations who focus on specific ages, cultures, abilities, or even gender identities. They are specialists who serve communities of traits rather than boundaries. They are helping to make the shift toward social equity by lifting those specific, marginalized communities, but none would claim that their organizations are inclusive or socially equal. They can’t be.

My concern is about bicycle organizations who should serve everyone, but present “social equity” as serving skin colors or genders. This confusion is not unique to bicycle organizations. Why is President Obama more black than white when he had one of each for parents? If a white baby is born to black parents he or she would be black by birth, but would be treated as and considered white by people who write social equity reports. If a woman is as assertive and athletic as male bicyclists, why is she grouped in with women who fear traffic in these reports?

The whole conversation needs to shift to a totally different mindset that all people have equal rights to bicycle. Bicycle advocacy is about breaking down barriers, about ensuring that everyone can choose to bicycle. If anyone in a certain community (neighborhood, town, or city) has the ability to ride a bike, but cannot, there is a problem that needs to be solved.

A neighborhood surrounded by freeways might have a predominance of black people. Advocates could look for gang violence and police brutality as possible barriers as these are frequently called out as barriers to bicycling in black neighborhoods. Here’s a classic example: People in Your Hood Ride Bikes to Shoot People. Just as likely, though, are those darn freeways. A tunnel or overpass that reconnects that neighborhood to the rest of the community could be all it takes to open the flood gates of bicycling.

The solution for social equity in the bicycle movement starts with knowing your community. No one at the national level can do this for you. Stop wasting time on all those jargon-filled reports. As I describe in Defying Poverty with Bicycles, take a long careful look at all the people in the community your organization serves. If it’s a retirement community, the vast majority should be over 60. You don’t have to worry if there aren’t that many kids riding. The neighborhood you serve may be mostly Latino with some white and Asian residents. Then don’t worry that black people aren’t bicycling there. Social equity for bicycling in your community will mean that the people who ride represent a cross section of that community.

Look past skin color and gender to see what obstacles these particular people face. Do they live in a neighborhood shunned by the city? Then their neighbors of all skin colors are also burdened by that problem. Are women not riding because they can’t ride with their children? Then single fathers and men who spend quality time with their children are also burdened by that problem.

If you find certain ages, cultures, income levels, and/or abilities missing from the people bicycling, only then should you begin your investigation into the problem – why they aren’t riding. If people with certain traits aren’t attending your events and engaging as volunteers or leaders, something needs to change in your bicycle programs to make them valuable and interesting to people like that. If the problem is external, define it and then launch a customized campaign to solve that particular problem. Read our Campaign Planning page for specific steps or email me at sue{at}onestreet.org for help. That’s what I’m here for.

If we expect the bicycle movement to equally serve all people, we have to shift our focus from skin color and assumed genders to honoring the expertise of local leaders of bicycle organizations who are the only ones who can truly assess the inequality of their particular communities. By dropping the national bravado and supporting these local leaders toward their unique solutions, the entire bicycle movement will eventually shift toward social equity.

DIY Gifts from Bicycle Parts

Many of the Social Bike Business programs we work with are looking for new ways to increase their income. This time of year, as people are looking for creative gifts for the cyclists in their lives, offers inspiration through do-it-yourself, handmade bicycle gifts. Bike programs with a retail storefront have lots of opportunity for increasing the number of products they sell. What better way to do so than with products made from bicycle parts? Here are some fun examples to spark your creativity:

JEWELRY:

• Jewelry from bike parts - images

PANNIERS:

• DIY bike panniers from recycled materials

TOOL ROLL:

• Tool roll from old jeans

You might also find ideas from the links in my similar post from a few years ago including Bike Hacks and DIY bike projects.

Many of these gifts could become regular products to sell at your social bike shop. So try making some for your favorite bicyclists and see if you’d like to make and sell more. Have fun!

Sue

Divisive Article on Working-Class Cyclists Only Worsens Issue

When I first saw this article posted on Governing, a repost from The Kinder Institute for Urban Research in Houston, I hoped to read about an inspiring and intimate discovery. The headline, “Most Cyclists Are Working-Class Immigrants, Not Hipsters,” shows a clear lack of awareness, which I hoped meant that the author had made a personal breakthrough.

Through my work at One Street, especially our Social Bike Business program, I often meet people with narrow ideas of what a bicyclist is. Some have never seen an impoverished person riding a bike. Rather, they may have seen them, but never noticed them. Many have only noticed sports cyclists in bright colors riding space-age bikes. Others believe that cycling is only for poor people and have somehow missed all the flashy cyclists, families on bikes, kids riding with friends, commuter cyclists, self-employed people riding for fun, and those groovy hipsters. And I certainly wouldn’t expect any of these happy cyclists to care much about other sorts of cyclists as they are too busy having fun riding in their own way.

All of us humans have a residual tendency to judge and categorize other humans. This is left over from our primitive beginning when survival depended on quickly and correctly judging a friend or foe. We often don’t even notice those who offer no friendship or threat. Our survival no longer depends on these inappropriate quick judgments, yet they dominate our lives and articles like this.

This tendency is a major barrier to overcome for all of our Social Bike Business partners. In order to attract their own partners and media attention to grow their program, they must get past the very basic first step of convincing them that low-income people ride bikes. Then, not only do they ride bikes, many enjoy riding bikes. Then comes the concept that bicycles and careers with bikes can help them out of poverty. It can be a long road.

I had hoped to read in this article a story of the author’s inspirational discovery of working-class cyclists. Unfortunately, the direction the author chose was all but inspirational. He sought out anyone with a grudge about cyclists who were different from themselves. While he includes interesting data from Houston’s modal choices, the bulk of the article jumps from grudge to grudge, even finding space to bash all bicycle advocates in general. Here’s a list of the grudges I found:

• Against building bikeways in low-income neighborhoods;
• Against all European bikeway and bike advocacy models;
• Against young, hip cyclists;
• Against the cycle chic movement;
• Against middle-class and wealthy cyclists;
• Against competitive cyclists;
• Even a hint of distain against child cyclists;
• And the sweeping grudge against all bicycle advocates in general.

Quite a feat for one article.

I think the only inspiration to take from this misguided article is for all of us to never segregate any sort of cyclist in our messaging and promotions. Such segregation only encourages articles like this and the setting of one group against another. Even as we work toward revealing the high number of low-income and impoverished cyclists all over the world, we must present them simply as bicyclists who have the same right to respect, to quality bikeways, to learning from Europeans and others, to being hip and chic, and to laughing like a kid again as they pedal.

Give the article a read and let me know in the comments section if I’m being too harsh. Also, note any grudges I may have missed.

Sue

Defying Poverty with Housing

I’ve been on a bit of a tangent lately, exploring various models of effective housing and the creation of interactive, human-scale communities. I suspect some selfish motivation since I’ve passed my fiftieth year and should be wondering where my feeble body is going to prop itself toward the latter part of my next fifty (being a slow learner, I figure I’ll need another fifty to make any sense of all of this).

The other, and far more prominent motivation has come from seeing my friends and acquaintances shut themselves away in isolated houses, alone after work or simply alone. The most ambitious of them schedule activities, which they leave their house to attend in other parts of town, but between those activities the seclusion presses in.

Defying Poverty with Bicycles, is all about providing the freedom and dignity of personal mobility to people in the greatest need. It also delves into career development and inspiring social entrepreneurs to start their own bicycle businesses. It covers transportation, education, income generation, even social interaction during the day, but it does not address the places where people go when all the action is finished for the day.

There’s something terribly wrong with the direction our communities are going in the developed world. Only a hundred years ago everyone expected to interact with their neighbors. Housing was clustered either in downtowns or in rural villages and mixed with businesses and community activities. I understand the long-gone motivation to move away from toxic downtowns into housing-only neighborhoods and suburbs. Unfortunately, that fix and the cleanup of downtowns led to segregated, single use zoning that not only keeps people from choosing to bicycle, it keeps people from other people who seem different from them.

So I started this new learning adventure by researching cohousing. I had been inspired by a cohousing community in Denmark highlighted in the fabulous movie Happy. This Danish cohousing community is a group of a dozen or so families living in houses clustered around a common building where they cook, meet, and play together. Unfortunately, cohousing seems to be something for the well-off.

So I looked into community development that includes the most disadvantage people and found an excellent book called Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages. With empathy and a good understanding of the struggles homeless people face, the book shows readers how to create places where homeless people are allowed to sleep. It goes into great depth on case studies of successful camps and even tiny-house enclaves that are sanctioned by cities in order to house “the homeless.”

My problem with this book, the case studies, and all the similar projects I’ve found is that they are following the exact pattern of the segregated zoning that has divided our towns and cities. Every project has a mission of serving “the homeless.” They all seek funding and charity donations because they are serving “the homeless.” There’s no recognition that “the homeless” are anything like the people leading or funding these projects. Even the projects that boast of leadership roles for their residents, still talk about serving “the homeless.”

I get that the best way to raise funds and donations, such as land and building materials, for such a project is to talk endlessly about “the homeless.” I’m afraid I can’t stomach it.

I faced a similar problem when developing One Street’s Social Bike Business program as well as capturing our recommendations in our book Defying Poverty with Bicycles. Leaders of organizations that are providing bicycles to impoverished people often see no harm in appeasing funders. If funders want to give charity to a segregated group of people who they believe are entirely different from them, what’s the harm? I say such one-way, charity thinking is at the very core of the problem and is in fact the most harmful thing we can possibly do. You’ll find in that book as well as Cures for Ailing Organizations a loud and clear message to avoid such charity mindsets.

I’m afraid that the tent city and tiny house movements are suffering from this same temptation. While I was thoroughly inspired by the details of the book such as allowing campers to develop their own camp site and inspiring them to help one another, I missed any mention of integrating such camps into a total community.

My hunt continues for model communities that are truly reinventing what we, in the developed world, lost over this past century – neighborhoods and villages that are designed specifically to welcome the most disadvantage people and thus welcome people, and their animals, from all income levels, abilities, and ages. Places where all-ages means that seniors and young people work and play together; where all-abilities means that even the most disabled people can contribute, perhaps overseeing a playground, running deliveries by electric wheelchair, or welcoming visitors. I’ve found this in developing countries and tribal communities, but these have existed since before records were kept. What I can’t find are models of such communities started from scratch.

I have this vision of a gated, cohousing community (don’t gag yet) that is gated only because dogs run free. Cars enter through the double gates that ensure the dogs cannot get out and park immediately in the single parking lot. From there the pathways lead to the mixed housing, businesses and workshops run by residents as well as the common areas and parks.

Yes, there is a tent area that ensures that the temporarily destitute have a place. There are also tiny houses – love these. But anyone can choose a tent or tiny house whether they have ever been homeless or not. The largest houses would be reasonable, perhaps 1,000 square feet max. A community garden would include gardening classes and result in a surplus sold at the community’s grocery store. The dog park would welcome nonresidents and mark dogs and other pets needing a home. The businesses, parks and ball courts would attract nonresidents to learn about the village and interact. The very design of the village and its homeowners’ association (HOA) charter would ensure that residents and visitors alike pitch in to help everything run smoothly and improve.

The biggest difference from this vision and the cohousing and tent city projects I’ve found so far is that it would follow conventional new development steps. It would be presented as a mixed-use development. Period. Home buyers would purchase their homes in various ways – most often through mortgage loans, sometime full cash, and others through a mix of labor and loan. Owners could rent their properties within the HOA guidelines. From the tents to the largest houses, every resident would be treated the same.

Why have I not found a project like this yet? Are there any out there that I have missed?

Bicycles remain my primary fixation for improving communities, but lately housing keeps creeping into my thoughts. I’d so appreciate any ideas and experience you can offer to help streamline my search. Please write them into the comments section. I’m looking forward to reaching that point in this learning adventure where integrated bicycle and housing programs converge. That will be cool!

Sue

Defying Poverty with Bicycles – The Book

I’ve been receiving encouraging responses to our book, Defying Poverty with Bicycles, the inspiration for this blog. Readers are taking the trouble to contact me and describe how they have used the book to build their own social bike business program. Many of these readers were helping to lead small, volunteer-run programs before they got their copy. Now they are doing the work needed to create an infrastructure that can handle growth. This growth will allow them to serve many more disadvantaged people with bicycles than they did before.

This book is for anyone considering building a program and eventually a whole organization around the goal of helping people with bicycles. This excerpt from the preface will help you decide if it would be a useful tool for you:

“Because people who live in or even near poverty are so consumed by the daily stress of survival they cannot engage in society. This often means isolation from community activities and even well-meaning programs designed to serve them. Unfortunately, such charitable service programs neglect to actually engage the people they are meant to serve, the very people who understand the struggle and language of their neighbors.

The Social Bike Business program is designed to bridge all of these gaps by guiding struggling people toward their own entrepreneurial success. Advantaged people are well served by bike shops, collectives and co-ops. Now it’s time to create the places that invite our most disadvantaged neighbors to purchase their own bike—refurbished or manufactured locally through the program—and engage in a new career that will enable them to lift themselves out of poverty. Even obtaining a quality transportation bicycle can save a person several hours each day if they had been walking and save them thousands of hard-earned dollars each year. Bicycles shrink cities at no charge. But this program does far more than that. It establishes bicycle community centers where struggling people can learn from each other about transportation bicycling and careers in bicycle business and beyond.

In the following chapters, you will learn how to plan for and launch your own Social Bike Business program, adapted to the needs and specialties of your particular community to ensure you reach your most disadvantaged neighbors. Your program can be as small as needed to succeed or as immense and complex as you believe you and your team can achieve. Think of this book as a menu to pick from rather than a prepared meal. Start where it makes sense for you and your team and go as far as you need to go. You might already have a small shop that would suffice as the main center for your program, so keep this in mind as you read about large centers designed for larger programs than yours needs to be. You and your team might want to focus on job training and refurbished used bikes. Then skip the chapter on bicycle manufacturing. This book is yours to do with what you like. Pull out the pieces that sing to you and shut the volume off on all the rest.

As you read, you will learn how to place the most disadvantaged people first and how to help them purchase their own bike through micro credit and subsidy qualification so they will value their bike. You will learn how to spot talents in people and offer a variety of career paths all based on bicycles, but designed to help them find work in many different fields, from business management to customer service to mechanics to owning their own business. You will learn proven business practices that ensure all employees of your program are paid a market rate salary. You will find ways to overcome the relentless stress and fear of poverty. And from this insight, you will learn how to choose the most effective means of reaching and engaging your community’s most disadvantaged residents—their preferred way of communicating, the locations most inviting to them, what they need in order to attend a meeting or workshop including food and childcare, and many more vital details that are commonly forgotten in today’s bicycle businesses and programs.  

Be sure to study Chapter 1 because that is where you will have to be honest with yourself and your local leadership team. Are you envisioning a more casual and fun volunteer program that gives bikes away? A co-op or collective might be a better fit. Such programs can build the bike culture. You might also be a budding for-profit business owner. For-profit bike shops are necessary elements of every bicycling community and a very honorable path to take.

If you choose Social Bike Business, one important requirement is that you must live in the community and be prepared to help lead the organization that takes on the program. I have encountered several well-meaning people who are enthusiastic about the program but expect others to take it on without their assistance. They see its potential in another community or believe that an organization they do not lead should take it on. In fact, the only way for you to succeed with the program is to step into a leadership position and inspire others to join you in building this program so it serves the community where all of you live. No program can thrive if it is started or run by outsiders.

We understand that Social Bike Business is not for everyone and, in order to succeed, each local program must compliment rather than compete with existing for-profit bike shops and co-ops/collectives. Each Social Bike Business program must fill an unfilled niche. That niche is service to and full engagement of the most disadvantaged people in each community. By filling that niche, Social Bike Business is designed to enable people to find their own path out of poverty through bicycles. Eighty percent of the world’s population is living in poverty (World Bank 2008). The Social Bike Business program opens a world of opportunities to them through bicycling. For this, they will continue to ride and perhaps even take up sport cycling. This will grow the whole bicycle movement and boost the bike industry as these formerly-poor join the advantaged bicycle enthusiasts of their community.

Social Bike Business is not about profits or charity. It is about helping people stand up against and defy poverty. Social Bike Business is about giving impoverished people the tools they need to leave poverty behind forever.”

Does that sound intriguing? You can buy your copy at any book vendor – local book store or online – or buy it through our website at www.OneStreet.org .

Do you already have a copy? Please leave a comment about how you have used the book to build your program.

Sue

Bicycle Industry Stagnation

Tomorrow I’ll go to Las Vegas to attend the annual Interbike trade show for the bicycle industry where One Street will have a booth once again. I’m looking forward to talking with attendees about our Bike Shift Levers and books. I may even be lucky enough to connect with unusual attendees who are interested in our Social Bike Business program and ways of serving disadvantaged people with bicycles.

This will be my 25^th Interbike in 26 years. More than half of those visits were as a bike shop owner having founded and operated Ironclad Bicycles here in Prescott for 13 years. Now my husband Jim owns the shop. He’ll go with me tomorrow and on Wednesday accept an award for Ironclad as one of America’s Best Bike Shops. That’s mighty cool.

But I’ll be at the show for One Street and I’m already feeling the dull thud of disappointment. I know I’ll walk onto the showroom floor only to see the same high tech, high priced bicycles that litter the glitzy floor each year. Of course the booth personnel will tout them as new and improved, but from One Street’s perspective, all I will likely see will be more ways to entice money from the same, aging, hardcore bicycle enthusiasts the industry has been selling to for all those 26 years. If I’m lucky, I’ll come upon a far off corner, perhaps in the basement where few attendees go, where visionary bike builders of affordable basic bikes will be sequestered.

This is why the American bike industry has stagnated, even regressed, since my first Interbike in 1990. This year in America, about the same number of bikes were sold as in 1990, but our population has grown. The bicycle organizations we work with through our Social Bike Business program all work with used bikes because the bike industry no longer makes basic, durable, affordable bikes. Read more about this problem in my previous post, Planned Obsolescence in the Bike Industry.

In my dreams I’d enter the Interbike show floor to find booth after booth filled with basic bikes that come equipped with racks, fenders, baskets, and lights, all for retail prices under $300. Their frames and forks would be simple steel tubing, no shocks or space-age materials. None of them would have a model year and all their parts would be interchangeable and repairable. The booth personnel would show photos of the American factories where their bikes were welded and assembled. If they were from another country, their bikes would be made in their country. They’d tout the appeal of their bikes for the majority of people. They’d talk about their programs for training and hiring disadvantaged people. They’d boast about their bike-design focus groups comprised of people who ride daily for their living.

If I bothered to take the time in such a dream, I might allow for a far off corner, perhaps in the basement, for specialty, bouncy bikes that cater to aging bicycle enthusiasts who might like to buy another bike.

Instead, I am bracing myself for the same old *&^% because our bike industry seems happy to wallow in its stagnation, sell to the same customers, and watch sales numbers drop along with those customers.

I did come upon a flicker of hope recently when I read a staff editorial in Bicycle Retailer & Industry News called “The real problem is stagnation – no matter how suppliers sell bikes.” Unfortunately, they don’t post staff editorials online or I’d link to it. The author responds to a recent buzz about bicycle manufacturers selling directly online, but points out the stagnated number of sales I just mentioned.

They grabbed my attention with this line: “There appears to be a fundamental disconnect between the bicycle industry and 99 percent of Americans.” Then they captured my heart with this one: “Our general message to consumers is one of aggressive athleticism – a message that for most is a turnoff.” This was printed in our main bike industry publication!

The editorial wraps up by repeating that online sales in not the problem. It leaves the stagnation issue unresolved. But to read such self-incriminating statements in the main publication for the American bicycle industry was a welcome breath of fresh air I’ll take with me onto the fusty showroom floor tomorrow. 

Are you just as frustrated with our bicycle industry as I am? Please leave a comment.

Sue