Recommended Reading About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

This is a list of some of the material SVBC staff and board members have read as part of their education about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the bike movement. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the wonderful resources about bicycling and equity.

Urban Adonia’s blog post on The Bike Justice Book.
A summary and description of the book Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation: Biking for All?, which Lugo was an editor of. The book consists of several essays by different authors tackles topics such as racial equity and racism in the bicycle advocacy movement, people of color in the bike advocacy movement, and the gap between transportation justice and bicycle justice.

The Social Implications of Bicycle Infrastructure: What It Means to Bike in America’s Best Cycling Cities
Daly uses case studies from Portland and Minneapolis to argue that “moving forward with an additional focus on resident diversity and history of place, planners and bicycle advocates can utilize human infrastructure to ensure that all residents feel invested in results of bicycle planning initiatives.”

Bicycle Equity: Fairness and Justice in Bicycle Planning and Design
This article examines the history of gentrification coupled with bicycling and provides ways for bike advocates to work alongside vulnerable communities who may be hesitant to join the bike advocacy movement.

Race, ethnicity, class, and protected bike lanes: An idea book for fairer cities
If cities truly want to provide systemically excluded communities with tools to include such communities in the switch from cars to bikes, then officials and planners in those cities must first make meaningful efforts to listen to those communities and incorporate their ideas; on the east coast, west coast, and all points between, this article shows that successful plans aren’t modeled solely on the much-touted European models of bike infrastructure, but rather upon the ideas and concerns voiced by those who live and work in those communities.

The Bicycle as a Tool of Social Justice
This article introduces us to philosopher Ivan Illich, who believed that technology can normalize, and thus create entrenched privileges, for certain types of mobility, such as cars; by rearranging the resources (financial and spatial) and favoring bicycling over driving, we can bring a sense of connectivity and equity back into all communities.

Bicycling’s Racist, Sexist, and Classist Beginnings and How they Impact Bicycling Today
A discussion over the links between past and present. Cycling clubs of the 1880s and 90s were explicitly racist, sexist and classist. Over a hundred years later, there is still major inequality in bicycling, whether it be towards women, minorities, immigrants or other underprivileged populations.