DIY Bike Lanes
Dec 23rd
Is your city taking away bike lanes? Are they too slow installing them where you, the riders, know they need to be?
Paint them yourselves.
” Do-it-yourself bike lanes are illegal, perhaps dangerous, potentially damaging to the cause of legitimate bike advocates everywhere—and really, really effective.” -- Dan Koeppel
Like the best architecture, DIY bike lanes are an in your face statement. They demand to be dealt with, to be used, to be talked about on boring blogs. Like the best of art, they incite. DIY bike lanes are political vandalism. DIY bike lanes are protest signs in the trench war between cars and people.
“This morning I rode the bootlegged Bedford Ave bike lane while listening to pirated music and wearing knock off Converse shoes.”
@jenniferdaniel (via @noneck)
The beat behind the Bedford Bike Lane Battle is that Bloomberg bowed to bellyaching believers and blew off the belabored bikers from Brooklyn driving them ballistic till they brandished buckets and brought the bike lanes back.
Apparently Bloomberg okayed the removal of some bike lanes that lead directly to the Williamsberg bridge. He gave this asinine order to secure some support from a certain powerful local Hasidic Jewish community. Local politics are impossible to generalize, yet the funnest headline had been that the group wanted the bike lanes removed due to beautiful girls on bikes tempting the faithful. The Williamsberg hipsters immediately painted back the bike lanes. The battle continues, yet the painting of your own bike lanes is what interests us the most. Stay tuned for a ‘how to’ post.
Another example , here is San Francisco during the morning rush hour.
They get busy down in LA as well.
DIY Urban Design
Dec 17th
Reading about Akay’s Urban Swings was the first time I saw the connection between graffiti and urban design. He took concrete drills and went wild on the city just like any kid with a can of spray paint. His act of installing swings was just like regular graffiti in that it had vandalism, aggression, destruction, and creation all in one. Yet when he was done with his ‘violence’ he left something that benefited the people in the city, he left it better than when he found it. I never went to Sweden to check them out, yet they probably made people stop and have a little fun. I’m sure it was was a blast for Akay and his crew to install. I bet even the city workers who took it down were a little hesitant, kind of like taking a child’s toys away for some inane adult reason.
“Everytime something is done on the street there is a level of interaction involved. Maybe its not the interaction we hoped for or expected, but every project is an invitation to respond. Even if the response is someone taking down what has been offered up.” – Akay
That’s the same interaction with any urban design or architecture. Once the artist or architect is finished with their design and it gets built, they give up control. It’s up to the people who run across it to give it meaning. Sometimes it is not the meaning that the designer had in mind. Sometimes it grows to be completely inappropriate for the space and people that have to deal with it. Like an unused park or boring street corner. Waiting for market forces or political will to change the design to a more fitting use could take forever. This is the beginning of the argument for DIY urban design. A few folks who notice the inappropriateness can go and make small edits to mitigate or fix the problem. Just like how a graffiti wall will slowly be covered up by better and better art, revisionist urban design can edit spaces and places, slowly making them more enjoyable.
All it takes is some fun ideas, such as Akay’s swings, and then they will spread on their own. No matter what the laws or barriers are that stand in the way.
