Two city things today
Just started reading David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries this morning. The book, which has all the charm of David Byrne, has a great story to it. Byrne started riding his bike as a way to stop dealing with cabs, get a little exercise, and as a superior way of going to clubs to hear music.
Eventually, after discovering the folding bike, he began travelling and touring with a bike and riding around the cities that he visited. (He blogs about his biking now.) He found that, while on his bike, he was:
more connected to the life on the streets than I would have inside a car or in some form of public transport: I could stop whenever I wanted to, it was often (very often) faster than a car . . . and I didn’t have to follow any set route.
…
This point of view — faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person — became my panoramic window on much of the world over the last thirty years — and it still is. It’s a big window and it looks out on a mainly urban landscape. … Through this window I catch glimpses of the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in. Cities, it occurred to, are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs and our often unconscious thoughts
The other urban thing is a nifty sticker campaign, by graphic designer Mike Joyce. The sticker reads “More Jane Jacobs, Less Marc Jacobs”.
Sad little footnote. Lots of people started defending Marc Jacobs to him. Worse still, lots of people asked who Jane Jacobs is. We don’t have a contemporary urban critic who celebrates city life . . . Steven Johnson is doing some of that, but I think we lose that voice to his technology and science history writing.
[…] This was a simple solution to many, many, many problems: by using bikes instead of cars or public transit, carbon emissions would be reduced, by getting people to ride they would have fewer heart problems, live healthier. Bikes require less infrastructure and generally pose fewer delays in people’s live so they reduce stress. David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries makes the charming argument that biking around cities makes him “feel more connected” and provides insights into “the mind of my fellow man.” And bikes are just nifty. […]