With the recent panel discussion at the Vancouver Playhouse of Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around, re:place was there as both panelist and audience – with editor Erick Villagomez providing one of the four presentations along with David Byrne, Amy Taylor, and Mayor Gregor Robertson.
Text by Sean Ruthen, re:place magazine
While in university, I happened upon an unconventional book by British architect Paul Shepheard, in which he quotes David Byrne as saying that freeways were our modern equivalent of great Gothic cathedrals – uttered while driving a large convertible automobile through some rural American expanse of countryside. While the message since that time seems to have remained the same, the vehicle most certainly has not, as the artist, musician, and author of Bicycle Diaries (Penguin Books 2009) has more recently taken to touring through the cities he visits on two wheels, feeling it is a more immediate and visceral means to experience these places he visits while on tour.
Such a perspective of modern European, North and South American cities is an experience that few of us will be able to have first hand, and as such Mr. Byrne has taken it upon himself to disseminate his observations through not only his writing, but by traveling to over a dozen cities now to share his findings – having already visited San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Providence, Boston, and Atlanta before coming to Vancouver. By maintaining the same format for the make-up of the panel – an urban theorist, a bicycle advocate, an elected city representative, and Mr. Byrne himself – the events are probably as revelatory to David Byrne for the diversity of comments in each city as is the material captivating for each audience.
Put on at the Vancouver Playhouse this last Sunday evening, this North American traveling show did not disappoint the over four hundred folks brave enough to venture out into the rain and wind, traveling by bicycle or otherwise (myself I opted for the Canada Line). With the majority of the crowd composed of numerous members of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition (VACC), all were curious to hear each particular panel member’s ‘spin’ on the subject, as well as to behold the spectacle of imagery and personality accompanying each panelist’s presentation.
Emceed by retired CBC broadcaster and bicycle advocate Paul Grant, the evening started with briefly thanking the evening’s sponsors – the City of Vancouver, Capilano Performing Arts Theatre, The Tyee, and BC Hydro – along with the panelists and then wasted no time in introducing Mr. Byrne. Looking casual and relaxed in a white track suit and runners, the founder of the iconic musical group Talking Heads and architect of the evening’s event chose to start the event with a brief history of ‘cities’ before shifting the focus to the bicycle.
Starting with a photograph of termite towers juxtaposed with an aerial photo of a typical modern suburb, Byrne described how termites were able to construct wholly efficient structures in which to live. This led to asking where humans have gone wrong in their urban constructions, referring to the obvious inefficiencies of our suburbs and their automobile-dominated infrastructure.
The next part of his presentation included a series of fictitious visions of the modern city – a futuristic skyline drawn by Hugh Ferris, a sketch by Frank Lloyd Wright of his ‘Broadacre City‘(complete with ‘flying’ cars), and a proposal for Harlem by Buckminster Fuller – but it is the ‘Radiant City’ proposal for Paris by Swiss architect Le Corbusier which Mr. Byrne finds particularly disconcerting. With its tall, cruciform towers seemingly giving over the ground plane to the automobile (actually Corb meant for them to be underground) Mr. Byrne believes that such visions have been to the utter detriment of our urban environments. As such, North American city planning policy for a half-century was shaped to satisfy the needs of the automobile – formerly a symbol of an individual’s liberty and mobility – now considered the ‘vehicle’ to environmental catastrophe, and perpetuator of our economy’s insatiable need for oil.
With several images taken from his bicycle travels in American cities dominated by both the freeway and automobile – Austin, Houston, Cleveland, Los Angeles – he pointed out how they all shared in common similar urban dead zones, where interchanges, cloverleafs, and on–ramps create environments unfit for pedestrians or cyclists. Similarly, he even pointed out that, in some instances, one could simply not get from point A to B without getting onto a major roadway. To drive home the point, Mr. Byrne presented an Escher–like photo collage of overpasses and freeways, which, appearing frighteningly at first to be real, evoked laughter from the audience when he pointed out it was not.
After a series of Orwellian road signs, Mr. Byrne treated us to a series of photos of bike infrastructure the world over (which he’s also cycled on) in a narrative not unlike his Bicycle Diaries. An Italian palazzo and esplanade in Mexico City are juxtaposed with a ‘street’ in Disneyworld. A series of slides demonstrating the problems of bike parking – strung up on scaffolding in China or, hip-high seas of bikes in Amsterdam, or slots like shopping carts in Tokyo – follows an aerial photo of public transit in Curitiba, Brazil (which uses high-speed buses where people pay before they board) and a computer rendering of future light-rail transit along 42nd street in his native NYC.
Along with a new state-of-the-art bike storage space not far from Chicago’s Millennium Park, he showed us how bike parking racks in Portland – coincidentally North America’s highest bike-per-capita city – are simply dropped on the street off the back of a truck when the need demands (and it does), where one regular car spot can provide room for ten bicycles. And with a tip of the hat to Montreal’s ‘Bixi’, now being used in Minneapolis as well as many other cities, he showed us bike sharing systems being used the world over, in more than 120 cities. These systems were largely inspired by such hugely successful systems like the non-regulated one in Amsterdam, and the seminal Velib in Paris.
Along with London’s recently opened bicycle ‘superhighway’ and Berlin’s enviable cycle/auto roadway sharing system, Byrne showed the recent opening of a median separated bike-lane in San Francisco along Market Street, as he most certainly must have been pleased to see Vancouver’s bike dedicated lanes along Hornby, Dunsmuir, and the Burrard Street bridge. He also briefly touched upon new electric bike technology research currently going on at MIT, including a wheel with its own self-contained electric motor that can be popped onto any bicycle.
And as a final innovation, Mr. Byrne shared the outcome of a photography project he commissioned, where he had overly wide streets in cities across America narrowed through photoshop manipulation as a means of illustrating how urban intimacy is achieved. In closing, he put a photo of the president of Louis Vuitton biking to work in a three piece suit, reminding us that as well as an athletic exercise, cycling can be a form of transportation on our city’s automobile choked streets.
Erick Villagomez must have felt he had a tough act to follow, and he deftly rose to the occasion using both humour and hard data to present the most novel concept of the evening – the 5 minute biking radius. Admitting that he had difficulty making the data presentable, calling this his ‘bike-curiousity’, he cleverly superimposed a bicycle on da Vinci’s ‘Proportions of Man’, taking the dimensions of the bike as the base module to make informed decisions about urban planning, and using a partial plan of the recently approved Hornby Street bike lane to demonstrate.
Using a map of the Metro Vancouver area, Erick showed us the difference between a 5 minute walking radius in Vancouver and a 5 minute driving one in Surrey, and then expanding on this theme, he juxtaposed the 5 minute walking radii along the Expo, Millenium, and Canada Lines with 5 minute biking radii over the same nodes. This showed a means by which the region could create a much more accessible public transit system. As an afterthought, he pointed out that while it’s a good start to offer bicycle access to the trains during peak hours, unless the cyclist boards the train at the beginning of the line, the chances of getting on are very slim, a problem Translink has to address if they are serious about offering the service.
Following Erick was an advocacy presentation by Amy Walker, publisher of the online magazine Momentum, with a readership strongly supported by the VACC. While offering a brief history of how cycling as a pastime influenced the emancipation of women’s fashion, much of Amy’s presentation consisted of photos and letters received by her magazine, telling amazing stories of families overcoming the loss of the family car through bike use or how designed communities encourage bike use. Also included was the story of one heroic cyclist who survived a horrific accident and learned to cycle again. Although diverse in content, each story had the common theme of cycling as a meditation between our past and our future.
Mayor Gregor Robertson ended the panel presentations, focusing on City-related issues. To this end, he proudly pointed out how the City’s yearly budget for bicycle infrastructure has doubled since he’s taken office. He also pointed out the astonishing statistics that between 1995 and 2005, while the Metro Vancouver population increased 27%, car use actually decreased 10%.
As he sees it, this is not rocket science, this is bicycle science, and as such the solution is a sensible one. Furthermore, he pointed out that Toronto has chosen to go in the opposite direction than Vancouver – voting down the notion of bike sharing lanes on the city’s roadways under the guise that such radical thinking is ‘car-hating’. This seems to be a new polar opposition in North America cities, pitting the rights of the car vs. those of the cyclist. There are many components to this complex issue, the biggest of which locally is the helmet bylaw. Of the over 120 cities presently using bike sharing systems, Gregor pointed out that only two have helmet bylaws, and Vancouver is keeping a close eye on the one in Melbourne to determine the best way to implement it in our city.
Closing his presentation, the mayor reminded us of the recent Winter Olympic games during which 27% of the population left their cars at home and availed themselves to Vancouver’s public transit system. Such numbers give us hope, and an idea of what we can achieve collectively when we come together for the common good.
Following Gregor’s conclusion, the floor was opened to questions, of which there were many. While a number of the questions were more informative statements then rigourous engagements with the material presented throughout the evening, two questions seemed to represent a common inquiry that all of us surely had: when and how is a shared bicycle system coming to Vancouver?
With the mayor suggesting that next year was a possibility for a launch, his earlier comments on the challenges of making it safe were reiterated by David Byrne, who spoke about the ‘how’ side of the question in relation to bike safety. For as he said point blank, releasing a large number of mostly novice cyclists in busy city streets is a recipe for disaster. Thus, he stated, a significant part of implementing a successful bike sharing system is public education, for cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians alike. Within this context, Byrne explained how the success of Amsterdam or Copenhagen does not happen overnight – occurring incrementally over time. The mayor would be well advised to heed these words, which he undoubtedly has already.
In the end, the evening’s event was well received, and many no doubt learned one or two things about cities and bicycles that perhaps they didn’t know before. With Mr. Byrne at the helm, all were sufficiently entertained, and one can only hope that he is working on a sequel to his Bicycle Diaries, (a review of which is soon to be coming to re:place) – one in which he documents the outcome of these events, along with others yet to come.
While to imagine a world wholly given over to the bicycle is perhaps a tad naïve, discussions prompted by forums such as this can only help break down the barriers of misinformation existing between the general public and bike advocates…and it is a huge step, or pedal, in the right direction.
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For more information on Bicycle Diairies, go here.
For more information on VACC, go here.
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By Sean Ruthen
Sean Ruthen is an architect working, living, and writing in Vancouver. While he has not been able to get back on a bike in Vancouver since being hit by a car shortly after moving here in 1997, he is an advocate of alternative transportation and a daily user of the Canada Line.
