First Encounters

I arrived in Copenhagen on Friday 4/5, about midday. I had flown here on KLM, the Dutch Airline, and through the haze of transatlantic overnight flight exhaustion, was greeted with this cup of coffee. Note the bicycle.

Note, Dutch stereotypes abound here, including the bicycle.

There is a friendly rivalry between the Danes and the Dutch about which country (and cities within each country) is/are the more bike friendly. Both countries have closely identified themselves on the international scene with bicycle urbanism and the creation of good cities through prioritizing bicycling as an an everyday practice. They have both worked hard during the past decade and a half or so to position themselves globally as knowledge creators eager to spread best practice models of bicycle policy implementation through ideologies like “Copenhagenize” and the Dutch Cycling Embassy.

I won’t take any sides here, but will say that most Americans, when they arrive in a city like Amsterdam or Copenhagen are taken aback by the sheer visibility of bicycles and people riding them. It seems to strain credibility that contemporary urban life can be grounded in the bicycle, for so many people. And in Copenhagen, those people are women (who are the majority of bicycler users).

And the American sense of urban order is destabilized, by cyclists wizzing by or stacking up at intersections in large numbers, such as this late afternoon scene near the train station in Copenhagen, on an important artery road:

Or by scenes like this, of bicycles strewn, seemingly willy-nilly on sidewalks that are already perilously narrow:

In Copenhagen bike racks around buildings proliferate, but the Danish idea of bike parking also involves parking a bicycle nearest to where you want to be. It is enabled by a particular kind of lock system on the rear wheel that prevents the bicycle from being ridden off (though not carried off, the suspicious American recognizes). This way of parking bicycles can force the pedestrian to take to the street, which can produce discomfort, a nagging sense that you’re doing something wrong, dangerous, even illegal…because the street is automobile, not people, space. But the relationship between people, bicycles, cars, and urban space is more complicated.

On small streets like this, cars are considered heavy and dangerous and the responsibility on the driver is to be careful. It leads to an interesting choreography I saw play out in Aarhus this morning, in the picture above, in which people sitting in a cafe spill out on to the street, bicyclists and pedestrians are coming and going, and periodically a car moves through. But the driver does it slowly and almost gingerly, swerving here and there to avoid walkers, people sitting in the street, and bicycle riders.

It’s not that either Denmark or the Netherlands are some kind of special Valhalla where there aren’t also very unfriendly, fast moving roads where cars dominate (I’ve seen plenty of those, not too far from where this picture is taken). And in the areas where bicycles are most common, as a pedestrian you have be hyper-aware of bicycle riders moving very swiftly from behind. But as far as first encounters go, most Americans are likely to experience a combination of pleasure, awe, and disorientation at seeing these kinds of things…

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Denmark…Coming soon!

Coming soon! Check back in April 2019, when I travel to Aarhus, Denmark to explore bicycle culture and politics there.

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What has become of my Bogotá research?

Five years ago, I produced the blog here as a kind of “reports from the field” site, where I could share with friends and colleagues back home what I was up to, and also begin to process the kinds of themes I was encountering, in my ethnographic fieldwork on urban bicycle culture and politics in Bogotá, Colombia. Over 800 people followed it, and then it went…stagnant.

But I didn’t go stagnant on the research, writing, and thinking. The research I did in Bogotá–and the blog I produced here–got me thinking a lot about the complicated and contextual relationships between cyclists and bicycle infrastructure, sparked by the skepticism and selective use of bike lanes I found among Bogotano cyclists, who did not automatically trust the infrastructure built for them with much fanfare, or assume it was always appropriate for them to use. I ended up writing up these thoughts in an essay called “On the Mundane Significance of Bike Lanes…And the Pursuit of Anthropology in the Here and Now.” It was published here, in this book.

In developing that essay, it struck me that there is a kind of ‘common sense’ in the U.S., rooted in technological determinism, that “if you build it, they will come,” in other words, all you really need to get people to use the bicycle as a form of everyday urban transportation is bike infrastructure, especially bike lanes protected by bollards, planters, etc. which give a sense of security. Bogotá complicates that story–explained in my “On the Mundane Significance of Bike Lanes” essay–and there is plenty of critical thinking out there about it in the U.S. as well (such as here, and here). Adonia Lugo, another cultural anthropologist, has shared some very thoughtful and important writing and advocacy on the notion of ‘human infrastructure’ as a way to adapt the dominant discourse of contemporary traffic engineering while redirecting it from its technological reductionism.

Beyond the bicycle and bike lanes themselves as socio-technologies grounded in everyday social relations, what fascinates me about all this is the common-sensical notions that circulate around these matters, which (as we anthropologists are fond of saying) are neither common nor sensical. In other words, what might be constituted as ‘common sense’ in one cultural, geographic, or historical context seems strange or downright foolish in another. With that in mind, I launched on more systematic (meta)thinking about how that category of knowing–‘common sense’–intersects with and shapes discourse around urban bicycle use. In my college, when you are promoted to Full Professor, you are asked to deliver a kind of valedictory lecture on your work, so I decided to use mine to explore this topic in a lecture entitled “On the Anthropology of Bicycles and (Un)Common Sense, available here:

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Scrutinizing Bogotá’s Miraculous Transformation

Ciclovia shot 2014This interesting article in The Guardian just came across my transom. It’s about anthropological research that scrutinizes Bogotá’s apparent urban transformation during the past twenty years by looking critically at the gap between how the story has been sold internationally and on-the-ground realities in Bogotá, where much of the bally-hooed change has either not materialized, or just reinforced certain pre-existing social hierarchies. It’s a theme that aligns closely with my own research, though my ethnographic focus is distinct.

As I was leaving Bogotá to return to the U.S. back in late-June, one of my anthropology colleagues at the Universidad Nacional told me about a book project she was working on with a similar critical focus and she invited me to make my own contribution. Getting to our meeting had been a bit of an ordeal as my cheap Colombian bicycle, perhaps sensing that I would soon be abandoning it, decided to go haywire on me. Crossing through an intersection three or four spokes shot out of the rear wheel, one of them right into my tire, resulting in a quickly flattening tire, and–somehow–generating one of the worst chain sucks I’ve ever witnessed. I’m a handy bike mechanic but it took me a good twenty minutes to massage–and strong arm–the bike back into useable shape with no tools, and we limped to the meeting (very late now) with me covered in grease and nasty Bogotá street grime.

Protesta 2014After my profuse apologies and efforts to not get grease all over the chair I was sitting in, she explained that the project she was working on examines how Colombia’s declining homicide rates, new constitutional protections of ethnic rights, its initiatives to demobilize paramilitaries, and its efforts at urban renewal have become the basis of a widely-circulating narrative, promoted by the U.S. and Colombian governments and media outlets throughout North America and Europe, of Colombia as a model for successful policy innovation. The way the narrative had been constructed and circulated, she argued, had greatly oversimplified some incredibly complex and unfinished dynamics that were still playing out. A point anthropologists often make, and it was hers too, is that “innovative” policy solutions don’t enter into historical, political-economic, and cultural vaccuums, and in fact the dynamics associated with these domains continue to shape the social field as well as the ways these policies are interpreted and implemented. It captivated me immediately because it was this very narrative of Bogotá as innovative bicycle city that I had come to scrutinize.

Four wheelerSo with her invitation to think more deeply about this issue, here’s what I’m working on now:

During the 7th World Urban Forum of 2014, Bogotá received a coveted Urban Sustainability prize, recognized for its initiatives to lower water and energy consumption, promote the use of recycled construction materials, and strengthen non-motorized transportation through the addition of new lanes to its already expansive network of bicycle lanes and tracks. Bogotá’s image as a global beacon of transportation sustainability, in particular, has circulated widely during the past decade, in part thanks to the abilities former mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa have had to communicate on a global stage their administrations’ urban revitalization and alternative transportation initiatives between 1994 and 2003.

In those initiatives, the bicycle was singled out as a protagonist in constructing a new “citizen culture” and in enabling all citizens, regardless of socio-economic status, to have equal right to the city. The expansion of the city’s weekly ciclovía events and the creation of the largest bicycle network in the Americas has generated interest among northern audiences and urban leaders struggling with their own problems of mobility, and led the BBC in 2011 to declare Bogotá a “biking paradise.” But during the past decade, even as more people have taken to the bicycle as an everyday mode of transportation in Bogotá, successive city administrations have ignored or downplayed the bicycle as a priority in dealing with the city’s ongoing mobility problems, and huge numbers of people continue to express skepticism about bicycles as a viable transportation option.

In response to poorly-designed and now crumbling infrastructure, many bicycle riders express a strong sense that the “golden years” are over, and the city is experiencing the rise of an increasingly assertive citizen bicycle advocacy sector struggling to communicate the relevance of the bicycle to a skeptical public and policymakers. This paper, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Bogotá bicycle advocates and city officials involved in bicycle mobility issues, explores why so many Bogotanos themselves problematize the image of the city as a biking paradise, the reasons the image still circulates transnationally, and the quotidian struggles involved in constructing a new bicycle culture and politics in the city.

Beginning to Pull Together My Findings

My family and I have been back from Bogotá for about a month and a half now, and though I’ve been submerged in summer teaching and finishing a new textbook on cultural anthropology for Oxford University Press, I haven’t stopped thinking about my fieldwork in Bogotá and the issues it has raised for me as an ethnographer of urban bicycle mobility. I was recently invited to give a talk on my research at the University of Vermont’s Transportation Research Center, where I am a faculty affiliate and involved in Vermont-based bicycle research. A video of the talk, entitled “Getting Around Bogotá by Bicycle: Some Ethnographic Reflections” in which I tentatively share some of my findings is above.

Reflections on Colombia’s “Historic Day”

IMG_2897

They’re calling him “Nairon-Man” and “King-tana.” This past Sunday, Nairo Quintana won the Giro d’Italia, which makes him not only the first Latin American to win this prestigious bike race, but only one of six who have won it their very first time riding it. He is currently ranked by the UCI as the world’s #1 rider (though that’s likely to change after the Tour de France next month, which Quintana will not participate in). As if this news weren’t good enough, the second place finisher was also a Colombian, Rigoberto Urán, and the winner of the “King of the Mountain” award was also a Colombian, Julián Arredondo. Declaring it a “historic day,” newspapers, television stations, even the president have celebrated this victory as Colombia’s most significant accomplishment ever in its sporting history. With these victories bicycles are on people’s minds here in Colombia.

IMG_2890Because Quintana’s victory was more or less sewn up before the race actually ended, Sunday morning Bogotá’s institute of sports and recreation (along with Quintana’s team sponsor, Movistar) set up a large television screen on Avenida Séptima to show the end of the race, so that people on bikes participating in Ciclovía would not have to miss it. I spent about a half-hour there watching the awards ceremony after the end of the race with a crowd of some sixty or so cyclists of all stripes–men on racing bikes in full team kit, kids on training wheels being pulled by a rope by a parent, young women on mountain bikes, and so forth–in other words, the typical mix of people young and old, male and female out for a recreational ride who you’ll see in Ciclovía (but won’t see during the week riding for transportation).

Though people in the crowd didn’t tend to stay long (they were, after all, out for a bike ride), I did have a chance to talk to a few people and it was clear to me that a number of them had been following the race not just here at the end but since its beginning in early May and that they had a sense of the race’s details. They also said they were proud of Quintana’s victory and how well the other Colombians did. People erupted in cheers whenever they showed one of the Colombian’s receiving an award. A few people waved Colombian flags they had with them for the occasion.

IMG_2961It was a pretty mild response, though, and in some respects this isn’t so surprising. Colombians are not especially nationalistic and their strongest expressions of nationalism, with a few exceptions (such as territorial conflicts with neighbors), are often associated with how well their national sports figures are doing–in European professional soccer, the Olympics, and especially the World Cup. Colombians also tend to be strongly regionalistic, which moderates their sense of identification with the larger sense of nationhood. Here in Bogotá, people tend to identify as either “cachacos” (an image of a polite and cultured city dweller) or as residents of a cosmopolitan melting pot. They don’t think of themselves as “regionalists;” they’re “capitalinos” (residents of the capital).

In line with that sense of regional identity, the strongest outpouring of public pride in the victory came from Quintana’s home department of Boyacá where, as a friend of mine who was there over the weekend told me, there was a widespread party-like atmopshere.

And yet it is true that another source of nationalistic identification has been around Colombian cyclists who did well in Europe beginning in the early-1970s such as Cochise Rodriguez and then gained dominance in the 1980s with figures like Lucho Herrera, considered (until now) to be the high-point of Colombian accomplishment in international bike racing. Since that time, goes the consensus here, the doping epidemic became so pervasive in professional cycling that Colombians (who are thought not to dope) were put at a disadvantage. But now that doping is under control, Colombians are once again becoming dominant, with their natural abilities borne of (it is believed) a combination of extreme geographic conditions (mountains and altitude) and their hard work ethic (especially those, like Quintana, who come from hard-working farming backgrounds).

IMG_2900In a timely editorial in El Espectador called “The Revenge of the Bicycles” the other day, a prominent news journalist made an interesting observation that mildly challenges this essentializing view. Even while such ideas might have some validity, he says, there is a more simple dynamic at work: Colombian success in bicycling is related to the fact that it is one of the only truly accessible and inclusive sports here because roadways are free, so anyone can do it no matter what social class they might come from. Other sports are expensive and the spaces used for them charge money. The victories of these cyclists from humble backgrounds, he says, is a revenge against this country’s business community and elites who exclude the poor and would just as soon run the bicycle rider over in their large SUVs with tinted windows.

Though I like the spirit of his point, the story is perhaps not so simple, given the non-inclusive dynamics of bicycle racing in this country. There are implicit and explicit gender issues at work here. The reality is that this racing victory–as is the case with bicycle racing in this country more generally–is implicitly read through masculine eyes and as a masculine victory given the lack of women’s presence in road racing. (This does not mean that there is no recognition of women as protagonistic cyclists, as the case of Mariana Pajón who is a world champion BMX rider and national figure here demonstrates, just that road racing here is considered a men’s sport.) Another reading of the victory was expressed in a newspaper cartoon I saw in which a man on a bicycle is wearing a pink jersey, and his companion says “The marvel of sport…now pink is a men’s color” (Naior, as the winner, wears the “maglia rosa” or pink jersey). The cartoon was drawn by a man, as the sarcasm in it made evident.

In any case, this victory is set against a backdrop in which it is widely believed that good news can be hard to find in this country. As one commentator notes, “In the middle of political chaos, social difficulties, economic problems, the crisis in values, insecurity in cities, the jealousies of some journalists, the brand wars between sponsors, the preferences of each population or region, and of the terrible inequality in the countryside, the only collective pleasure we have in Colombia is that which sports give us.” Historic day indeed.

Do you need to ride a bike to be Colombian?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y0j8dt92Vs

Of course not. But it seems that the presidential campaign of Enrique Peñalosa seems to think so. Watch the ad above.

Here’s a translation:

“A bicycle is something you learn and never forget. It’s about maintaining momentum without losing balance. It’s about owning your destiny, believing in your dreams, and helping others achieve their own. It’s about your own force. It’s more than a bicycle. It’s our determination to get out ahead. The bicycle unites us. There are only a few days left to elect our future. This Sunday, 18th of May, let’s pedal for Colombia.” This last bit is an invitation to join Peñalosa on what his party website calls a “characteristic ciclopaseo” in Bogotá to close the campaign.

The first round of presidential elections are this weekend, and Peñalosa’s campaign seems doomed to not survive. These elections have been especially contentious, with some pretty major mudslinging and scandalous dirty tricks between the top two candidates that commentators say they haven’t seen in a while. Those candidates, the president Juan Manuel Santos and his main rival the ultra-conservative Oscar Iván Zuluaga, have accused each other of (contra Zuluaga) hiring a computer hacker to spy on the emails of the peace negotiators in Havana and even the president’s email and then getting caught lying about it and (contra President Santos) of accepting money from drug barons.

As the acrimony has deepened, many thought Peñalosa’s chance to rise above it all and gain the lead had come, because of his consistently positive message and his distance from the traditional political machinations that generate all the corruption and political stagnation associated with the top two candidates and their parties. But his response has been surprisingly subdued and, independent of that, some key figures on the left, including the mayor of Bogotá, deserted him and aligned themselves with the President to avoid an ultra-conservative take over. No doubt that took some wind out of Peñalosa’s sails. In these last days a key message coming out of his campaign seems to have been to unleash the bicycle theme, ramping up the bicycle discourse and projecting the bicycle as a metaphor for what can unite the country.

This country, as one history book calls it “a nation in spite of itself,” has been profoundly divided for decades. But even as powerful a symbol of Colombianness as the bicycle is, its resonance doesn’t seem to translate very effectively to the political arena. As one bemused colleague of mine at the university reflected, “I haven’t ridden a bike in years! You have to be crazy to ride a bike in this city! People want cars.” It’s not that this individual is anti-Peñalosa or even anti-bike, but when people’s notions of bicycles are filtered in such a way, one cannot but help see the limits of Peñalosa’s gambit.

Indeed, even though levels of car ownership are among the lowest in Latin America, development economists and national economic planners are expecting the number of cars in this country to grow as incomes have risen. Currently in Colombia, for example, there are about 8 cars per 100 people, with a bit less than that in Bogotá. But the visions of economic planners is that Bogotá should aspire to become more like Santiago, Chile (25 cars per 100 people) or Lima, Peru (22 cars per 100 people). For Bogotá, a city already mired in profound mobility problems, this is a horrific vision since it would lead to a collapse in the urban transportation system, of complete immobility. One government economic planner I spoke with recognizes the problem, but seems resigned. “I know, it’s terrible. But it’s a sign of our economic growth.” It makes you wonder, if Peñalosa projected a rosy future of car-driving Colombians, would he be on top?

Bici-Activismo and The Power of Bicycle Colectivos

IMG_0211During the past few years, bicycle colectivos have been sprouting up all over this city. A bicycle colectivo is a group of cycling enthusiasts who organize activities that express their love of the “caballito de acero,” or the “little iron horse” as many here affectionately refer to their bicycles. The basis of most colectivos is the organization of non-competitive group rides on city streets. Some of the hundred or so colectivos are formally organized and registered with the government, and others are informal. The largest and most seasoned of these is the group Ciclopaseos de los Miercoles, who organize a critical-mass style ride that attracts several hundred people on Wednesday evenings to explore some part of the city. The idea is partly to help riders gain confidence riding in traffic and see parts of the city they might not otherwise see because of fear, or distance from their home. The other part is to demonstrate to non-cyclists that cyclists are having fun…and are a relevant actor on city streets.

As a new book published in honor of the colectivos by the city’s culture, sports, and recreation department (El Libro de la Bici de Bogotá) attests, not all bicycle colectivos are focused on organizing fun rides in the city. Others are focused on restoring old bikes; providing training so that an underrepresented group, such as women or kids, can learn how to ride bikes safely in the city; spreading information about bike issues on the internet; promoting a stronger linkage between environmental activism and cyclists; or pressuring city government to support new pro-bicycle policies or perform the necessary maintenance on the extensive bicycle system that is already there.

IMG_2684Not all bicycle colectivos consider themselves politically-active or get involved in political processes related to bicycle transportation. But through their creation and involvement in colectivos, urban cyclists have been gaining new recognition as a social force. Colectivos have also been seeking and earning a voice in the politics of urban mobility, most recently in a new decree project promoting bicycle parking and cyclist safety in the Bogotá city council. The current mayor, in dialogue with pro-bike activists, has integrated bike issues into his development plan, and bike activists have even been hired in key positions in the city’s mobility bureaucracy. It is the bike colectivos that are helping shape and define the emergence of a new political consciousness and “bici-activismo” here. I have been tracking the different expressions of this activism in my research.

The bici-activismo that is taking shape is set against a backdrop of a city that does not have a strong tradition of citizen activism. As one of the city’s influential alternative transportation advocates has observed, “Colombia has never been characterized for its bursting citizen participation. Like the good conservative country it is, people are fine wearing a pro-something t-shirt or donating $10 a month to Unicef and saying ‘I participate.’ As for the rest, all that was needed was a fifty year war of the FARC to produce a massive mobilization, that has never happened more than once, against this movement. For other themes, little or nothing has been seen.” It is also set against a backdrop of concern that the extensive bicycle system and gains for cyclists during the Mockus and Peñalosa mayorships in the 1990s and early-2000s have been neglected by subsequent city administrations, and that if cyclists don’t defend and promote bicycle interests the possibilities for urban bicycle use will continue to deteriorate.

IMG_2693This weekend, one modest expression of the power of the bicycle colectivos was on display, in an event that took place to celebrate the World Day of Recycling called “Reciclovía,” a combination of the word “recycling” with “cycle way.” The event was convened by a citizen environmentalist colectivo, Bogotá Basura Cero (Bogotá Zero Trash), which wanted to bring public attention to the importance of recycling. How to do that? Invite the bicycle colectivos!

Responding to the invitation which was diffused through Facebook and Twitter–the critical organizing tools of bici-activistas here–late last Saturday afternoon, dozens of bicycle colectivos convened their members and other interested cyclists at one of five gathering points throughout the city. From these points, escorted by a colectivo like Ciclo Paseo de los Miercoles or young police officers on bicycles, each group rode to the city’s central park, Parque Simón Bolívar, a trip of anywhere between three and ten miles. The group I rode with had about sixty riders when we started and gained another thirty or so as we traveled.

Once everyone converged on the park from around the city–perhaps three hundred or so people in total–everyone was allowed to ride in the park, which is usually closed at night. A pedal-powered concert at a nearby mall followed. It was a ludic event, full of fun, laughter, and good times. At the front of the pack setting the tone was Bici Pachanga (Bike Party), a colectivo of about a dozen costumed riders mounted on exotic cargo bikes or fixies, and a tricycle with a sound system blaring techno-cumbia party music. Their participation was electrifying and drew a lot of attention from others sharing the streets.

IMG_2678But there were also political assertions at work here. Colectivos with widely different attitudes toward the bicycle put aside whatever differences they have with each other, and by the hundreds put their bodies out into traffic, disrupting the flow of automobile and bus traffic, communicating that they too deserve space on the roads. It also brought together two nascent citizen activist communities–urban environmentalists and cyclists–who have been working in solidarity together in recent years, to affirm their common goal of producing a cleaner city. All of this was on visual display, and the political message was hard to miss.

But there was another kind of power at work here as well, since the event also drew the official recognition and logistical support of various government institutions–the National Police, the city’s Institute of Sport and Recreation–as well as a major commercial center where middle class people shop–all in ways that traditionally marginalized cyclists don’t often experience.

There are many obstacles to bici-activismo here, ranging from political apathy of many citizens to the challenges of doing volunteer organizing when it means putting livelihood concerns to the side. Or the waxing and waning interest on the part of politicians in the plight of the bicycle (currently waxing). And the cultural perception that bicycles are for the poor, and everyone should aspire to own cars. But as a new site of citizen political consciousness takes shape around the bicycle, the forms of power that bici-activistas mobilize will be important to watch.

 

Nairo Quintana and Urban Cyclist Imaginaries

IMG_0294 Last week began the Giro d’Italia, one of bicycle racing’s most important international stage events. Colombians are well-represented in the race, and two in particular, Rigoberto Urán and Nairo Quintana, are expected to be top finishers.

As of today, Urán is doing very well–he’s in third place–but the race is still young and for weeks commentators here have said they think it will be Quintana who pulls off the win, given his second place finish in last year’s Tour de France and the fact that he and his Movistar team are in tip-top shape.

Quintana is a prominent national figure here, and he fits the classic stereotype of the Colombian racer from humble countryside origins who started riding bikes as transportation and turned into a international bicycle racing sensation. Everyone here knows the prototype. People are especially quick to refer to Lucho “el Jardinerito [Little Gardener] de Fusagasugá” Herrera, the great Colombian pioneer of European racing in the 1980s and early-90s. They almost always observe that he developed his formidable talents, legs, and lungs as a gardener riding to and from his jobs through the mountains outside of Bogotá on a bicycle weighed down with tools. Indeed the gardener with his weed-whacker, rakes, and shovels strapped onto a bicycle is a very common sight here in Bogotá.

Quintana is soft-spoken and timid, grew up in a family of potato and maize farmers in the Department of Boyacá (a department known as especially bicycle-crazy), and got his first bicycle at a young age whereupon he built his stamina and powerful legs as a transportation cyclist running deliveries around the farm and riding to school through Boyacá’s mountainous terrain. In his teens, he began riding with serious sport cyclists, though with casual intentions, and blew everyone away. With training and experience, he has become one of the most formidable escarabajos in Colombian cycling history, escarabajo being a term that means “beetle” and refers to the world-renowned abilities of Colombian racers to climb mountains. Colombia’s best international racers all come from the mountainous regions–Boyacá, Antioquia, Valle del Cauca, and Cundinamarca–and once you see how steep these mountains are, not to mention the high altitudes at which people here ride, it’s no surprise they do so well internationally.

IMG_1737Bicycling is, according to everyone, Colombia’s second sport, behind soccer. But as one friend here has pointed out, all of Colombia’s glories in international sport come from cycling, not soccer. Here in Bogotá, it’s not unusual to see people riding the streets–during Sunday Ciclovías and on any given weekday in the middle of rush hour traffic–out for a brisk ride on an expensive racing bike and full team kit, evoking the glories of Colombian racers like Quintana. As you leave the city and enter the Cundinamarca countryside, especially during the weekend, the numbers of sport riders surge, as does mountain biking; Colombians have developed a reputation as enthusiastic and highly competitive in mountain biking as well. (The photo here is Colombia’s largest mountain bike race that took place a couple of months ago in Boyacá with 690 participants, most of them from Bogotá.)

How do these sporting imaginaries relate to the urban cyclist? Obviously I can’t ask the hundreds of thousands of everyday cyclists, nor can I get in other people’s heads. But it’s pretty clear to me that there is no single imaginary of the urban cyclist, or that it necessarily has much to do with sport. For the majority of bicycle users–these being low income men (mostly, though women ride bikes too)–the imaginary of the bicycle is about convenience, saving money, and saving time, of being free of getting stuck in buses or traffic jams that affect getting to and from work, all set against a backdrop of a struggle for a livelihood. For others, many of them young, educated, and new to the bicycle, it is connected to efforts to reimagine Bogotá as a sustainable city (in fact, the city recently won a prize at the World Urban Forum in Medellín last month for, among other ecological initiatives, its promotion of bicycle transportation). For an even smaller number, it’s about associating with transnational urban trendiness and chic fashion. For still others, it is imagining themselves as active and healthy through their participation in recreation. These are not mutually exclusive imaginaries, and they overlap.

IMG_2094But for some it’s clear that the prominence of Colombia’s competitiveness in bicycle sport gives important symbolic significance and legitimation to their everyday practice of getting around. As a friend involved in bicycle activism observed, “Although riding as an urban cyclist isn’t sport, there’s a tie many of us feel to this history and its glories. It gives you passion and can help you in certain moments. It’s the same heart, the same feeling.”

The lines between the imaginaries of urban transportation cycling and sport, in other words, can blur here. As one of my informants recounted to me, Nairo Quintana himself said in an interview that drivers need to recognize that the next time they cut off a cyclist they might be cutting off a future champion. The bicycle, Quintana said, should be given the status it deserves, whose potential for transportation and sports are equally important to Colombians.

Cross at the Zebras! Intersection Action, Bogotá Style

IMG_2419During the past few weeks as I’ve circulated around the city, I’ve noticed some unusual characters hanging around intersections and sidewalks. I saw several people dressed in zebra costumes on the Avenida Séptima near Avenida Chile (Calle 72). They were talking to pedestrians and cyclists crossing the streets in the middle of the block in front of cars, encouraging them to cross at the “cebras” (“zebras”), or crosswalks at signalled intersections.  They are called cebras because they consist of white painted lines which over black asphalt look like zebra stripes.

Then over several days and in various parts of the city, I ran into these somber characters, several dressed for a funeral and a fellow with a megaphone yelling at people to cross at the cebras. Standing next to them was a gravestone. Here’s one up close:

IMG_2420
It says “Antonio ‘The Lively One’ López. Here he lies, the most “watchful” one in the city, the one who was aware above all the other lively ones, he who ‘saved time’ and did not wear himself out looking for a secure crossing. He, the “lively one” now sleeps eternally.” There’s some fun play on words in it; the English translation doesn’t necessarily capture it.

They also handed out flyers like this, announcing in the last five years 26,000 pedestrian injuries and 1,300 deaths due to traffic accidents:

Scan

The facts are sobering. As a recent article in El Espectador explains, one pedestrian dies per day in Bogotá, and pedestrians (one of the largest mode shares in this city) are more likely than any other street users–bus riders, cyclists, or car drivers–to get hurt or killed when there is a traffic accident. Often they are innocent victims of careening cars or buses; but as the communications above indicate, pedestrians themselves are often at fault when they run in front of cars and don’t cross at the zebras and other secure crossings.

These “intersection actions” (as we might call them in the U.S.) are part of a city-wide campaign, put on by the Secretariat of Mobility, intended to promote safety and improved traffic flow. They are a long-standing phenomenon in Bogotá. The most legendary ones were performed during the mayorships of Antanas (“El Súper Cívico”) Mockus (1995-8; 2001-3). Among others: issuing soccer red cards to drivers and pedestrians to get citizens to pass judgement on the traffic infringements of others; firing the traffic police and replacing them with mimes for a few months to shock (and embarrass) people into following traffic rules; and painting black stars on the pavement where a pedestrian was killed.

These innovative initiatives were framed as cultivating “citizen culture,” that is, producing a citizenry that recognizes and follows laws as well as norms of basic courtesy and respect for others in public space–none of which (it is widely believed) many Bogotanos are inclined to do. (See here for a video of Mockus at lecturing at Vanderbilt about the theme.) And they worked…for a time. Since Mockus, city administrations have not prioritized these issues and some of the chaos and danger has, according to many, returned. Hence, the Secretariat of Mobility has revived such intersection actions in hopes of reversing the tide and reinvigorating what they now call “inteligencia vial,” or traffic intelligence, on Bogotá’s streets to improve one of the central problems of the city.

But there’s something else going on here that needs to be said. If you turn over the flyer and see the “Recommendations for Pedestrians,” you can see very clearly a central logic of transportation planning in this city that, one could argue, puts pedestrians and cyclists in a position of either inconvenience or vulnerability vis-a-vis motorized vehicles, whose flow is clearly prioritized over others. Look at “Ejemplo 3” at the bottom, which asks pedestrians to make three crossings, instead of making one direct crossing so as not to inconvenience drivers.

Secure Crossings

What pedestrian is actually going to do this? I actually put this question to one of the people running the intersection action, and I can’t say I got a satisfying response from a pedestrian point of view: “If we can reach even several people to change their behavior, that’s important.”

A striking coincidence is that the very same day I received this flyer, there was an article in the free public newspaper ADN arguing that the focus in the city needs to shift from making pedestrians solely responsible for their own safety (such as the campaign above does) to urban transportation planners whose poorly designed infrastructure produces high rates of accidentality for pedestrians. It is because they planned and built pedestrian bridges that in certain areas people avoid, not just because they are a pain to climb up and down but also because they are easy places to get robbed. Or they designed intersections and painted cebras in places that might be convenient for the flow of motorized traffic, but not for pedestrians. Both produce in pedestrians a tendency to make shorter and more direct crossings in places that are ultimately more dangerous for them.

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