Gazing out on the collective insanity that is Auckland’s three hour ‘rush hour’, it’s sometimes hard stay hopeful. But a little history sometimes helps.
Believe it or not, there was a time before Kiwis had a café culture. But these days Taihape’s cafes are as fundamental to its community life as gumboot throwing. Once, wine drinking was considered elitist, and olive oil was practically a banned substance.
Civilizing our cities, two wheels at a time (photo: Amsterdamize)
Architect Ian Athfield has described the introduction of footpath café culture as the most significant architectural development in New Zealand in decades – ushering in radically new sense of shared public space.
A decade or two later, some of us in the English speaking world are starting to get, just how much cycling civilizes cities. In the last few years London and New York have been transformed into more people-friendly spaces – and they’re only just getting started. We might think there’s something special about the Dutch and Danes, but once their cities were just as car-crazy as ours.
So what’s the catch? Time. Like other late learners, we don’t have the forty years the Danes and Dutch have spent to civilize their cities, if we are to avoid even more tragic health, environmental, economic, and social consequences.
Visionary leadership will go a long way, and it doesn’t have to be party politicized. London’s new Barclays sponsored public bikes are popularly known as Boris Bikes after the city’s actively cycling Tory mayor, whose advocacy of public bikes and cycle superhighways follows his Labour predecessor ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone’s halving of inner city congestion via inner-city tolls. Republican-independent Michael Bloomburg, whose urban design team is also conscious of the 40 years they don’t have, has transformed Broadway practically overnight, and gotten off to a brisk start to installing the 504 miles of separated lanes and 1296 miles of striped bike lanes in their master plan.
Jan Gehl, urban designer and currently working with Auckland City, just as he has for Cophenhagen, New York, Melbourne, Sydney, and a host of other cities in transition, says that every city he works with expresses profound pessimism about their embedded car culture: When all this started 40 years ago, he says there was no culture of public space and public life. Everybody said: “We are not Italians, we are Danes. It will never work here. It’s for the Southern Europeans, and here the mentality is not for mingling in the streets,” all this kind of stuff.
Here, well… notwithstanding Jan Gehl’s current involvement here, it’s hard to forget that visionary local government leadership on transport has historically been rather thin on the ground; and when it has poked its head over the parapet, its best ideas have been spurned at a local and national level.
One way or another, sanity will eventually prevail, but clearly, the civilizing of our cities isn’t something we can just leave up to local government.
The Future is in Our Hands
I’m sure I’m not alone in the experience, as a rider of what my sport-centric mechanic is wont to call an ‘old school’ bike, riding unhunched, unhurried and ununiformed, I find I get noticed. People cheer from bars, and when I’m parked at a café or supermarket come up and chat. For now, the simple act of being on the street is itself a political, and culture-shifting act – one with the potential to be even more transformative than our much vaunted café culture.
The news from the UN that recent heatwaves in the northern hemisphere are consistent with predictions for climate change, reminds me yet again that we just don’t have forty years, and car sharing service Cityhop reminds us that Aucklanders pump 182 elephants weight in CO2 every day. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what more we might be able to do ourselves, to make slow cycling happen faster.
Change is coming, that’s for sure, in fact, when it happens, there’s every chance that that , just like New Zealand coffee and wine we will have a utility cycling culture as rich, or even richer as anywhere else in the world. You heard it here first.
But how soon, is up to us as much anyone else.
What do you think? What what (after dressing, riding and living well on two wheels) are the most effective actions we can take, that will incite revolution on our streets?
The more communal action, the better the city. This is the reason we like living in cities; the liveliness; the community; hustle and bustle.
Sometimes things that city planners do seem at odds with this. Wide, fast streets. Large empty spaces between features. Unrelieved walls without street culture.
But regardless of bad planning it's always an option to fight it and inject community… cafe's applying for street licenses. Biking. Busking. Disclaimer; I own Jayride (NZ biggest carpooling site) – so yes, even carpooling.
In whatever way you can redefine private spaces as public spaces (even the inside of a car) – do it. The more social, the more lively, the better the city to live.
Plus, of course the more people share spaces, the more environmentally friendly those spaces become (less impact per person) – so it's literally all good.
I'm optimistic of the speed at which we can change. Cities like Copenhagen and London have done all the hard sell for us. We can see that it works. The world is getting smaller everyday and it's getting harder for politicians and the public to ignore the growing trends. We also need to do a better job at selling cycling. From little things, big things grow.
Great post Tim.
Enjoyed that post immensely. I think the Frocks-on-Bikes movement is doing a lot for utility cycling in NZ. People aren't motivated to cycle because it's fast, healthy, environmentally sound or even fun, but make it fashionable or trendy and you'll get a lot of converts. A percentage of those will keep riding after the hip-factor has faded because of the other benefits.
We need some bike-placements on Shortland Street et al.
…get teenage girls riding a bike and the boys will soon follow…I'm certain of that.
Drop the nonsensical helmet law. That is the single biggest thing Govt could do.
There is absolutely no proof anywhere that this has made a blind bit of difference, apart from to put 1/3 of people off casual cycling and 100% off using bike hire schemes (cf Melbourne).
I strongly encourage people to get out there sans-helmet. 200g of coffee-cup material won't make a bit of difference should you suffer the one-in-a-million freak accident that might lead to a serious head injury or death. If anyone challenges you, ask them right back if they wear one for the more dangerous tasks of driving a car, getting in/out of a swimming pool, bath, etc.
NZ needs some co-ordinated and ad-hoc civil disobedience now.
Perhaps closer to the Local Body Elections you could mention the names of as many "cycle friendly" would be councilors and Mayoral candidates as possible for us all to consider. Or point us in the direction of where to find such information please.
Cycle Action will endeavour to provide some insight prior to the election. Based on my observations at the Dominion Rd Community consultation meeting last night, politicians of all persuasions seemed to be distancing themselves from the project. It's too hot to handle I guess. It really is critical that as many people as possible make a submission in support of the project.
Agree Carolyn. I think cycle and transport advocacy groups should make official endorsements.