Andrew Small
Andrew Small is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C., and author of the CityLab Daily newsletter (subscribe here). He was previously an editorial fellow at CityLab.
Training wheels: What if the race to get people to use pollution-free transportation isn’t a sprint or a marathon? Maybe it’s a waddle. Every Sunday, the city of Bogotá has shut down half of a major road to make way for a car-free bike zone. The weekly tradition, Ciclovía, started 40 years ago as a revolutionary protest against pollution. Now it’s also become a space for young kids to learn to bike together as families walk, jog, scoot, and cycle in the street.
Turning busy thoroughfares into quiet cycling superhighways has had a symbolic power, giving children and adults a vision of what the city might look like with fewer cars. As other cities around the world imitate the event, the hope for cleaner and safer streets has become a given in the Colombian capital. The city’s mayor declared in his first term that “a quality city is not one that has great roads, but one where a child can safely go anywhere on a bicycle.” Read the latest entry in our “Room To Grow” series on CityLab: How Bogotá’s Cycling Superhighway Shaped a Generation.
Car ownership is rising in New York City (Streetsblog NYC)
Amazon is coming for the corner store (Curbed)
The dread and hope of migrant farmers and families (California Sunday)
Banished: Miami-Dade’s homeless sex offender problem (The Marshall Project)
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