“Bicycle City” sounds like a place I’d like to live. By planners’ description, its “highlights” include a “walkable, urban design; vibrant local economy; eco-friendly, sustainable design; organic farming; human-powered transportation; strong and diverse community, active healthy lifestyle.” By contrast to most urban areas, Bicycle City doesn’t have “pollution, traffic jams, parking lots, national franchises, strip malls, stress, chemicals, or 'cookie cutter' ” designs. It’s a planned, car-free community that’s “environmentally responsible,” glorifies pedestrians, disdains cars, has a holistic community view, and is rich with culture. It “seeks to exist in harmony with the Earth.” Bicycle City sounds like a utopia; Pleasantville without the obnoxious perfection and picket fences. Too bad it doesn’t yet exist.

Is Bicycle City a potential reality or merely a planner’s pipe dream? The concept has been in the works since the early 1990’s and now, says the site, the project has adequate funding to begin building BC. There are no definite plans to erect Bicycle City any time soon, though the site says it will likely be set in the south or southwestern United States.

Bicycle City makes an exhaustive case for car-free communities with a laundry list of reasons that encompass human health and safety, pollution, climate change, global warming, and its widespread effects on the earth and all of its inhabitants. The site also offers a look at eco-friendly transportation.

Communities, like Vauban in Germany, Masdar in the Persian Gulf, and Arcosanti in Arizona, uphold similar, ped- and eco-friendly ideals.

Photos via flickr by Themis Chapsis, M J M, and puppethead.

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J.C., Sr. said:

And this dream goes back to the early '30's. La-la the land of milk and honey where a (bicycle?)bum can stay for many a day and he won't need any money.

April 28, 2008

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