Cycles of Investment: Bicycle Infrastructure, Gentrification, and the Restructuring of the San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

Bicycling for transportation in American cities has grown dramatically in the past 20 years, symbolizing the return of capital investment and commercial vitality to formerly disinvested urban cores. Pucher et al. (2011) note the cycling "renaissance" taking place to the greatest extent in gentrifying neighborhoods, but the processes relating cycling and gentrification have gone largely unexplored. This article examines the early role that bicycle advocacy organizations in San Francisco played in articulating the specifically economic value of bicycle infrastructure investment. This narrative is now commonplace, and widely applied both to neighborhood revitalization and urban competition for "talent." This alliance of bicycle advocacy with the "livable" turn of gentrification raises serious questions for those who would pursue a more democratic and socially just politics of the bicycle.

Urban sustainability experiments in their socio-economic milieux: A quantitative approach

“…This variable is used as proxy indicator for later stages of gentrification. Here, a well-established, spatially manifest 'eco-habitus' of gentrifiers can be expected in the form, for example, of organic supermarkets or independent cafes (Håkansson, 2017), as well as infrastructure such as bicycle lanes (Stehlin, 2015) and community gardens to provide for residents' sustainable lifestyle choices. The higher the percentage change in incomes in an LSOA the more food-growing projects are expected to emerge.…”

The making of a pro-cycling city: Social practices and bicycle mobilities

“…This is not a 'bleak scenario' of future post-car societies (as with Urry, 2013). A cycle-friendly city is desirable, prosperous and 'trendy' (Gössling, 2013, page 203) and it attracts young professionals and defect young (often high-income) families from fleeting to the suburbs (for similar US findings, see Stehlin, 2015). Also, it is healthy citizens, and not obese ones (as in car-based societies), who populate such a city.…”

Movilidad Cotidiana y Cambio Modal en Zonas Urbanas de Baja Densidad. Estudio de Caso en la Región Metropolitana de Barcelona.

“…Pero en el marco de la crisis ecológica y la extensión del uso del vehículo a gran parte de la sociedad, se revisa el papel del coche como bien posicional. Al contrario, la literatura académica relaciona cada vez más a ciertos colectivos de rentas altas y con un estilo de vida cosmopolita con el uso de la bicicleta, que ahora se interpreta como símbolo y modo de desplazamiento urbano, en detrimento del coche para un uso cotidiano y continuado (Stehlin, 2015).…”