Eric Peterson on Cycle Space : Architecture and Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle
From the Los Angeles Review of Books
Cyclespace: Architecture & Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle by Steven Fleming, an architecture professor in avid cyclist in Australia, illustrates a central paradox about biking in the urban context: it holds out the possibility, especially as more people choose to live in dense urban centers, to end our reliance on the automobile and make our cities more environmentally as well as socially sustainable. But many contend that despite biking’s recent embrace by big city mayors, it is actually a small fix at best, one that amounts to little more than the endorsement of a bourgeois hobby, and serves as a smokescreen, hiding more trenchant issues of mobility access, auto-dependence, and income inequality.