ChiWhoBike #44
I’m big into the 15 minute city and also the 15 minute neighborhood - being in a good, walkable, bikeable community where you can do things safely by bike. And part of why I started biking and why I try to get a lot of my friends onto biking is because I think it’s just a good way to experience the city. And I want to raise awareness, especially in the black and brown communities in Chicago, because there’s sometimes a stigma attached to biking. Like, you bike because you can’t afford a car. And so in the hierarchy of commuters, bikers are seen as less valuable, and we feel it. Depending upon where you are, people just don’t really value you. So that’s something that I’m passionate about trying to raise awareness of, and changing people’s thinking around biking.
And I think that that value system is still pervasive where people assume that, okay, you bike because you can’t afford a car, you can’t get approved for a car. And even if that is the case, who cares? So that’s another reason why I bike, to raise awareness and to break that stigma and let people know like, yo, it’s okay. It’s a lot more fun. And so that more people can experience their neighborhoods without feeling like they have to be in a car, you know? Because I think it just makes for a richer transportation experience as well as a richer living experience.
Once you get out of the Wicker Park, Logan Square areas and to the further South and West parts of the city there’s just less stuff to do on a bike. I would like for our city to get all of the neighborhoods to be complete in terms of resources that make it easy to walk and bike, so you don’t have to travel like 30 minutes just to go to a grocery store and get some fresh produce, things like that. So I’d like to see Chicago become more, not just from an infrastructure standpoint, but also the resources. So you have the means to go where you need to go, but also places to go.
