More UEPI -- A Bike Summit Post-Mortem
The folks over at UEPI (see this post), were kind enough to send along the advance text of a blog post that should soon be posted on this website and wiki.
The post says that more than 300 cyclists participated in the March 7, 2009 L.A. Bike Summit, a happening co-organized by UEPI.
Here's a paragraph from the post:
At the end of the Summit, UEPI organizer Joe Linton suggested two specific "? and possibly immediate "? opportunities. The first involved an L.A. adaptation of Mexico City's "ciclovia" where each Sunday, Mexico City's main thoroughfare, the Reforma, is closed for cars and open for bicyclists and pedestrians. As Dhyana Quintanar, Mexico City's Bicycle Coordinator and another Summit speaker put it, the ciclovia represents a "cultural shift," creating a symbolic, yet powerful shift in the landscape. With its popularity growing, a supportive Mexico City government, working with community groups, has brought the ciclovia to other neighborhoods as well, building a growing sense that cycling (and streets turned over to pedestrians as well) can become a potent way to re-envision the city and build a constituency of both bike users and advocates. The Los Angeles region has many places "? neighborhoods, small cities, key locations "? where a ciclovia can become possible but a continuing act and illustration of that crucial "cultural shift".
In a related note, UEPI's Robert Gottlieb previously turned -- or returned -- a stretch of the Arroyo Seco highway into a cyclists' nirvana.
Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user ubrayj02. It was used under Creative Commons license.
**Disclosures: Gottlieb and at least three other past or current UEPI staff members have participated in some way in the Public Salon Series at Farmlab, where TTLA's blogger works. Same for the editor of the Sierra Club magazine linked to within this post.
