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.
Also: World’s Fairs and the death of optimism, and what to do with London’s empty space.
What We’re Following
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.
More on CityLab
What We’re Reading
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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About the Author
