| Title | : | The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 022621091X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780226210919 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published November 9, 2015 |
The Cycling City is a sharp history of the bicycle’s rise and fall in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, American cities were home to more cyclists, more cycling infrastructure, more bicycle friendly legislation, and a richer cycling culture than anywhere else in the world. Evan Friss unearths the hidden history of the cycling city, demonstrating that diverse groups of cyclists managed to remap cities with new roads, paths, and laws, challenge social conventions, and even dream up a new urban ideal inspired by the bicycle. When cities were chaotic and filthy, bicycle advocates imagined an improved landscape in which pollution was negligible, transportation was silent and rapid, leisure spaces were democratic, and the divisions between city and country were blurred. Friss argues that when the utopian vision of a cycling city faded by the turn of the century, its death paved the way for today’s car-centric cities—and ended the prospect of a true American cycling city ever being built.
The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s Reviews
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Lots and lots (and lots) of detail (in a modest-sized book.) ONLY because I enjoy bike riding, Time And Again, and The Last Days Of Night was I willing to persevere with this book. I was a little surprised with there being no mention of the Wright brothers, however glancing. DEFINITELY worth seeing if it appeals. The listing of other titles in the Historical Studies of Urban America is bonus extra information.
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pretty dense, pretty dry. wanted more out of the last few chapters about cycling for reform and the others that accompany the pattern. overall, good read.
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Solid and dense but sometimes dry history about rise (and fall) of bicycling in the US. If you are interested in history and bicycles another interesting book is
Bicycle in Wartime. -
An edited version of this review appeared in American History magazine.
By Daniel de Visé
In the final decade of the nineteenth century, the bicycle reshaped the American city. Herds of cyclists vied with streetcars and horses for supremacy. A forceful bicycle lobby compelled local governments to pave roads and pass traffic laws, bringing order to the fin-de-siècle chaos of urban transit.
For a brief time, urban Americans embraced the bicycle as their preferred vehicle and cycling as their favorite sport. At the peak of the craze, fifty cycling magazines circulated, Madison Square Garden housed a cycling academy, and Chicago hosted four hundred bicycle shops.
And then, as abruptly as a punctured tire, the bicycle boom went bust. Production dwindled from one million bicycles in 1900 to one-quarter million in 1904. Membership in the League of American Wheelmen plummeted from 103,000 in 1898 to 6,000 in 1902.
In The Cycling City, historian Evan Friss reveals the crucial role of bicycles and bicyclists in shaping the modern city. At the dawn of the bicycle era, anarchy ruled the streets. A powerful cycling lobby drove New York in 1897 to enact the nation’s first comprehensive traffic rules. The “wheelman’s vote” drove civic leaders in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago to pave thousands of miles of roads.
The bicycle arrived at a time when most American could journey no farther than their feet would carry them. Bicycles brought liberation and escape: Now, an urbanite could pedal several miles to work and ride out to the country on weekends.
New York and Chicago “led the way in creating cycling-related infrastructure,” Friss writes, anticipating a new era of bicycle-friendly urban planning in Paris and London and Amsterdam. Then, just after the turn of the century, bicycles vanished from American streets.
A hundred years later, an American cycling revival is underway. In Europe, though, bicycles never went away. One reason is the density and inherent bicycle-friendliness of ancient European cities. But Friss points to another factor, one that speaks volumes about the fundamental frivolity of American consumerism. Europeans purchased bicycles for utility. Americans seized on the two-wheeler mostly for sport. Once the fad had passed and the bicycles were gone, America’s city planners bowed to
the ascendant automobile.
The Cycling City takes a breezy ride through a forgotten chapter of America’s urban history.
Daniel de Visé is author of The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France. -
Glad to read it and it was quite interesting, a 4.5. Would have liked a bit more clarification in some areas when the author made statements, but overall a good read.
