CicLAvia and human infrastructure in Los Angeles: ethnographic experiments in equitable bike planning

Abstract

Across the United States, bike movements are advocating for infrastructural changes to streets. Sustainable transport advocates and researchers expect that reshaping built environments will increase bicycle usage because people will feel safer riding with more cycling facilities in place. These strategies identify road design as the key factor in how people use streets. From an ethnographic perspective, cycling research should also consider how road users create meanings in transit. This paper looks beyond physical changes to space and explores how "human infrastructure" encourages or discourages bicycling. Tacking between observation and participation, cultural anthropology can help design experimental spaces, such as Los Angeles' CicLAvia, that offer diverse city inhabitants an opportunity to reflect on their transport habits in situ. Experimental spaces for bicycling show that human infrastructure shapes transportation behavior, and has the potential to change it. This paper contributes to a growing ethnographic literature in mobilities research.

Scofflaw bicycling: Illegal but rational

“…While respondents may have under-or overreported their reckless behavior, online surveys have proven beneficial when it comes to enticing survey respondents to disclose illegal activities (Khazaal et al, 2014;Ramo & Prochaska, 2012;Van Selm & Jankowski, 2006); nevertheless, this assumption remains a limitation. This work is additionally limited by the possible exclusion of potentially relevant populations (e.g., low-income, immigrants, those legally prohibited from driving) that could be less likely to use the internet or complete a bicycling behavior survey (Lugo, 2013;Zavestoski and Agyeman, 2015). Minority populations may also report dramatically different responses given the history of disproportionate enforcement of minor traffic violations by police in some communities (Lundman and Kaufman, 2003;Warren et al, 2006;Harris, 1999;Roh and Robinson, 2009).…”

Experimental Infrastructure: Experiences in Bicycling in Quito, Ecuador

“…I follow recent experimental trends in research originating from the University of California's Irvine Center for Ethnography in my use of ethnographic methods to challenge and change dominant notions about infrastructure, gender and democratic public space. Moreover, scholarship on bici culture (Lugo, ; ) motivated me to design my ethnography as an experiment that is constantly moving, based on my expertise and my shifting roles in the field as a planner, activist and researcher. Therefore, I became a part of the Carishinas' sociotechnical configuration through intra‐action—I carefully chose to study the collective, create a connection with the collective through their everyday political beliefs, and move within the formations of women that cycle.…”

“…These collaborations manifest themselves in organized events such as the annual Conference for Ciclovías Recreativas de las Américas or the World Urban Bicycle Forum. Such conferences have a history of subcultural movements that resist car culture (Furness, ; Aldred, ) and generate critical mass (Lugo, ). Cyclists in cities carry meaning through social identity (Rosen et al ., ) and make political claims to citizenship (Aldred, ; Scott, ).…”

A Multidisciplinary Analytical Framework for Studying Active Mobility Patterns

“…Therefore, methods such as ethnographies (Lugo, 2013;Meneses-Reyes, 2013), in-deep interviews and direct observation (Jirón, 2011), and other approaches from sociology (Jungnickel and Aldred, 2014) not only remain popular among social scientists but they are gaining a renewed impetus even among researchers from engineering, architecture or computer sciences who are rediscovering the opportunities these approaches offer.…”