Last Monday, January 20th, people across US cities participated in parades honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the so-called MLK Day, marking his birthday. His legacy has inspired city advocates of color to fight for more equitable US cities and racial equity in urban planning. Their movements claim people’s right to the city, focusing on justice, immigration, affordable housing, and basically the issue of people of color not being able to access the same things that white people have.
As US cities worldwide figure out how to move towards more liveable and sustainable cities, civil bike movements have also been sprouting up in cities to encourage sustainable mobility and reduced car use.
Concerned about climate change, in 2008, Adonia Lugo, a cultural anthropologist from Los Angeles, was so inspired by the Ciclovía project in Bogota that she was convinced to organize a similar event in Los Angeles. In 2010, CicLAvia arrived in Los Angeles, marking the city’s first car-free event, which proved to be highly successful.
This experience was part of her PhD dissertation about sustainable urban transportation. By being in contact with various bike associations and cycling advocates, she began to realize that the discussion about mobility was often centered on the significant mistake made in the past of building cities around cars.
Similarly, she noticed that, at a time when more public resources than ever before were being allocated toward sustainable or active transportation infrastructure projects, these investments weren’t being guided by the many people of color who were using bicycles as a mobility solution.
‘Even though most cyclists and people using transit are working-class folks, over and over I’ve been asked to participate in conversations that start with, ‘how do we get more low-income people biking and walking?” wonders Lugo.
‘The focus of the discussion is always on the built environment; thus, to make cities sustainable, we have to change it. But this explanation seems very simplistic to me. I believe that, in the case of some US cities, more interdisciplinary research is required,’ she says.
Adonia Lugo currently teaches in the Urban Sustainability MA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. She is also the founder of People for Mobility Justice, an organization that advocates for greater awareness of mobility justice. She is a bike justice advocate.
It struck me that although many organizations were promoting cycling in Los Angeles, none of them had a prospective focus on other human rights movements that tackle social problems and influence people’s mobility. It was too one-sided for me, purely relying on planning and infrastructure.
In 2014, she introduced the concept of mobility justice. And since then, she has been working on how these other social issues, such as discrimination based on race or class, impact urban travel and how mobility justice is regulated within transportation equity policy, as well as how racial equity is accommodated in urban planning accordingly.
Moreover, Adonia Lugo’s work goes beyond mobility justice. She has also founded the organization Untokening, a multiracial collective that centers on the lived experiences of marginalized communities to address mobility justice. Lugo speaks of ‘human infrastructure’, the need for diverse social networks to promote sustainable transformation in cities. Essentially, urban planning cannot occur without people of color in the room, and city officials should not assume that all people of color share the same priorities.
To understand mobility, you have to understand history
There is a strong connection between history and mobility in US cities, largely due to the impact of segregation. City planning used to impose limits on moving people from one part of the city to another, creating historical inequalities. In US cities, the embedded influence of structural racism, for instance, in city planning, has been affecting the urban lives of people of color until today; from the human right to mobility to other rights such as good air quality.
Vibrant black neighborhoods became, in some cases, inner-ring neighborhoods cut off by highways crossing through them, resulting in a loss of transit, parks, and air quality, as well as a negative impact on their local economies and street safety.
Due to interpersonal violence or police violence, we cannot pretend that people of color in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago have the freedom and resources to move with dignity in public spaces and feel safe without a car, explains Olantuji Oboi Reed.
In Chicago, Reed co-founded Slow Roll Chicago, an organization to create a transformative bicycle culture, in other words, using the bike as a vehicle for social change. They have been local pioneers.
He was born and raised in Chicago and previously worked for large corporations in the Social Responsibility field. While battling depression, he started to ride an old bike to stay mentally healthy. He realized that the freedom provided by his bike to connect to nature and people was a transformative power. He realized that bikes could bring about change on the South and West Sides of Chicago, which people of color predominantly inhabit.
Through weekly group rides along these neighborhoods, Slow Roll Chicago addresses issues of violence, health, and other socioeconomic disparities. As a result, Slow Roll has even worked with Divvy, the Mayor’s office, and the Chicago Department of Transportation.
I started to mobilize people who didn’t feel safe on the streets due to violence and traffic. Sometimes, even on a safe street, there is a perceived violence that serves as a barrier. It’s not only a matter of combating violence, but it is the perception of it that makes you feel unsafe. Public spaces work when people have a sense of trust and ownership.
Reed, inspired by Lugo’s organization Untokening, has founded Equiticity and become an advocate of racial equity in urban planning and, in a broader sense, across sectors beyond biking. He has stepped back from his role at Slow Roll Chicago.
‘Racial equity is the fair, just distribution of resources, explicitly targeting and prioritizing racial groups who have the greatest need due to being systematically disenfranchised and using these resources to address both historical and contemporary injustices and their consequential burdens’.
Fixing the planning and decision-making process in cities
More equitable cities start with untokening the way governments and organizations, working for cities, make decisions.
‘Racial equity demands a public commitment to intentional diversity and radical inclusion within our society and its institutions. It dictates the respect and empowerment of local innovators and local community leaders as national leaders, highlighting, elevating, energizing, and investing in the transformative work being done at the neighborhood level, respecting this wisdom and expertise, and valuing their central role in creating authentic, relevant, and sustainable solutions to address problems at all levels in our society,’ says Reed.
‘Our primary audience is Black and Brown people. We aim to enhance our urban experiences. We want to see Brown and Black people in leadership positions within traditionally white-led environmental organizations, city administrations, transportation advocacy coalitions, and more,’ explains Reed. ‘When organizations are genuinely committed to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion, they must empower people of color to have a voice and the internal power to achieve the racially equitable outcomes and solutions we seek in urban planning, transportation, and all aspects of the city. Black and Brown people have to own those solutions as well.’
As cities worldwide rethink their approach to cars and other issues to create more liveable and sustainable cities, US cities are often trying to emulate the exceptional mobility models of European cities. However, advocates like Lugo and Reed claim that “Copenhagenize” US cities could lead to exacerbating racial inequality if the black indigenous Peoples Collective is not part of the process. Issues of gentrification and urban inequity would also be a consequence, as some of those neighborhoods of color are ironically being rediscovered.
‘In this advocacy model, the problem isn’t the overall framework of top-down planning and engineering of public space; the problem is that white men with cars were at the center of the 20th-century approach, explains Adonia Lugo.
In US cities, the use of bikes and cycling has become a symbol of social justice and social change. In fact, it proves that discussions about getting more liveable car-free cities are much more complex. To make the urban planning process more inclusive, policymakers, urban planners, and decision-making stakeholders should not only find better ways to engage communities of color but also let them own the process.
In Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s words: ‘It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people’.
