Bikes Mean Business: The Creative Class, the Urban Growth Coalition, and the Community in Bicycle Policymaking

Burk, Derek Thomas

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-8yad-9183

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Bikes Mean Business: The Creative Class, the Urban Growth Coalition, and the Community in Bicycle Policymaking

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Automobile transportation is among the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and reducing vehicle miles traveled must be part of our climate change mitigation efforts. One recent trend that, if accelerated, could aid in this effort is the increase in bicycling for transportation in large US cities since 1990. Rates of commuting to work by bicycle have increased in more than three-quarters of large US cities since 1990, and the average rate has nearly doubled. At the same time, cities have been adopting more bicycle friendly policies, such as the construction of dedicated bicycle traffic lanes and mixed-use bicycle paths. The correlation of these two trends suggests that policy may be able to influence travel behavior, and in this dissertation I find strong evidence of such a relationship. Given the efficacy of bicycle friendly policies, it is imperative that we understand the political arrangements that have led to their adoption. How do we explain the general upward trend in bicycle friendly policies in US cities, and how do we explain variation between cities in the adoption of such policies? While understanding the politics of bicycle friendly policies has practical implications for climate change mitigation efforts, it also has theoretical implications for the sociology of urban and environmental politics. Among urban sociologists, there is widespread consensus that a "growth coalition" of wealthy business and real estate actors dominate urban policymaking. The growth coalition thesis, however, also predicts that these powerful actors will tend to oppose environmental protections as a drag on growth. While researchers have found no evidence that the power of the growth coalition has diminished, cities' increasing --- if selective --- adoption of environmentally friendly policies, including bicycle friendly policies, calls for a reevaluation of the growth coalition's role in efforts to address environmental problems such as climate change. In this dissertation, I make three central claims. First, I argue that the advent and growing influence of what I term "Creative Class discourse" has persuaded the wealthy business and real estate actors that make up the growth coalition, and their allies in city hall, that bicycle friendly policies serve their interests. This discourse emphasizes the importance of attracting a highly-skilled workforce for sustaining economic growth, and the importance of lifestyle amenities in attracting such a workforce. Second, I argue that variation in the level of support from growth coalition actors, over time and between cities, explains both the general rise of bicycle friendly policies and variation between cities in their adoption. Third, I argue that the involvement of growth coalition actors in bicycle policymaking produces particular kinds of bicycle friendly policies: capital-intensive, place-making projects that offer profit-potential for developers. While these projects can create excitement and momentum for bicycling, they also create greater risk of gentrification and displacement than incremental, geographically dispersed projects. Greater integration of community organizations into bicycle advocacy reduces growth coalition involvement, resulting in policies that are more sensitive to gentrification concerns, but produce less dramatic transformations of the built environment and potentially less excitement for bicycling. I support these claims with a regression analysis of the adoption of bicycle friendly policies in 60 large US cities and analysis of interviews with participants in the bicycle politics of four case cities. My conclusions suggest that the political power of the growth coalition can be harnessed to environmental ends, but that the resulting policies risk disrupting the lives of poor, working-class, and racial minority urban residents if no provisions are made to avoid such harms.

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