(PCC) Program on Chinese Cities – Thoughts on Overseas Travels Series
Authors: Sai Ma,
Visiting Scholar, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. masai555@gmail.com
【Author’s Note】
The 2024 “Better Cities” Film Festival was held at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. A total of four documentary films were screened at the festival: The Engine Inside, Housing & Architecture, Southern Urbanism & Main Street Revitalization, and Zoning and Land Use. The last three films each included 6 to 9 short films. These movies showcased the successful experiences and cases of urban transportation, housing architecture, economic revitalization, zoning, and land use in southern cities during urban renewal. They offered a multidimensional exploration of how to build cleaner, smarter, more livable, and more sustainable future urban development models—advocating for innovative thinking, reimagining more human-centered streets, using green clean energy, and emphasizing the protection of historical and cultural context during urban renewal, with a community-centered and people-oriented approach to create public spaces. The author will present a series of four reports on the films screened at the festival, starting with the first film, The Engine Inside.
The film The Engine Inside was directed by the renowned outdoor sports documentary filmmaker Darcy Wittenburg. It tells the stories of six ordinary people from different cities around the world—Kamloops, Alaska, New York, Ghana, Colorado, and Cairo—and their connections with bicycles (Figure 1). After watching the film, the author was deeply moved and inspired.
(1) Riding for Rebuilding Life and Self-Identity
The film first tells the story of Jay Bearhead, an Indigenous mountain biker from Kamloops, Canada. Bearhead experienced the pain of losing family members in a car accident during his childhood. Although he was later adopted by a kind couple, he faced unfair treatment and marginalization at school, eventually leading to alcohol and drug abuse and ultimately imprisonment. An accidental opportunity at a bike shop changed his life—bicycles brought him the joy of riding, helping him regain a sense of freedom, confidence, justice, and belonging. He reconnected with his cultural heritage, deepening his understanding and appreciation of his cultural background, and eventually became a writer. Mountain biking led him on a journey of addiction recovery and spiritual healing; cycling became a way of spiritual support and emotional expression, bringing him peace and strength in nature. Bearhead poignantly said, “It was the bike that saved me.”
(2) Riding to Challenge Physical Limits and Address Climate Change
Janice Tower, at 60 years old, challenged the limits of human endurance by successfully crossing frozen Alaska, completing one of the world’s toughest endurance races, “The Iditarod Trail Invitational.” She rode 350 miles from Knik to McGrath, traversing snowy mountains. Tower considers cycling a near-meditative activity; when riding in the snow, she feels only freedom and happiness. She said, “We all enjoy this magical machine. Although our languages are different, it doesn’t matter because the bicycle is our common language.”
(3) Riding to Improve Community Environment and Promote Social Welfare
Darnell Meyers, passionate about BMX riding on New York streets, is well-known in the NYC BMX scene by his nickname “RR Dblocks,” representing “Rough Riders,” famous for street bike stunts, wheelies, and weaving through traffic. He founded the “Street Riders Club” through social media, encouraging youth participation in various community welfare activities, helping many “at-risk” youth, and donating over 300 bicycles to children in need.
(4) Riding to Promote Environmental Protection, Education, and Rural Community Development
Entrepreneur Kwabena Danso, from a poor region in Ghana, West Africa, is the founder and CEO of “Boomers International,” a factory that produces handmade bamboo bicycles, each requiring 40 hours of craftsmanship. “Bamboo releases more oxygen than other plants,” Danso says, adding that large-scale bamboo planting can reduce carbon emissions and release more oxygen, protecting the natural environment. These handcrafted natural “bamboo bicycles” have been a blessing for local children—previously, they had to walk 8 miles for 6 hours each day to attend school, but bicycles have greatly shortened their travel time. Danso reinvests his profits into the factory and donates part of it to the community, helping to establish a school for over 400 children, with facilities such as a library and computer room, improving the quality of life in the local community and enabling children to change their destinies through education.
(5) Riding for Physical and Mental Health and Safer Streets
Lawyer and cyclist Megan Hottman experienced the devastating loss of a friend in a cycling accident and suffered severe trauma herself after being hit while cycling. During her recovery, she became dedicated to advocating for laws protecting cyclist safety, defending accident victims, and raising funds to help cities build independent bike lanes separate from motorways, promoting bicycle infrastructure to ensure rider safety. Hottman actively spreads the “bicycle gospel,” continuing her cycling journey with courage after her physical recovery.
(6) Riding for Social Equality, Fairness, and Freedom
Nouran Salah, a brave female cyclist from Cairo, challenges traditional gender inequality concepts in her pursuit of freedom. She founded a female cyclist team and actively engages in public welfare activities, such as offering free cycling lessons to women in squares and riding through neighborhoods to deliver essential supplies and food to children in slums. Salah proudly states, “We use bicycles to make the world a better place.”
Though these six individuals featured in the film come from different parts of the world, with diverse cultural backgrounds and professions, they share a common belief: a deep love for bicycles and life. Despite experiencing physical or emotional trauma, they bravely face challenges, strive to push their physical limits, are passionate about life, engage in social welfare, and challenge systemic societal norms. Through their stories, we witness life’s challenges and their courage, efforts, and struggles in facing them. They have even become one with their bicycles, showing us the power of this “machine.” In fact, the engine is within us; the combination of body and mind can unleash immense energy—a highly efficient, clean, and pollution-free natural bioenergy. To activate this machine, we only need to activate our “inner engine.” As the film’s final narration states: “Cars have shaped our cities and, in turn, our lives. Now it’s time to rebuild and reshape the world. For a cleaner, smarter, and more sustainable future, we need to change our mindset—to see ourselves as the source of energy. No other invention so perfectly combines human innovation and the miracle of the human body as the bicycle. Simply put, when humans power a bicycle, they become the cleanest, most efficient engine on earth.” Indeed, each of us has the power to transform within and change our lives through cycling, contributing to building a better world.
As the film progresses, the topics gradually become more serious, revealing some systemic social issues in urbanization behind these personal stories, sparking thought. Urbanization brings many challenges, and traffic and automobile-related issues are among them. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), from 2010 to 2021, an average of 33,000 people per year died in automobile accidents in the United States, while an average of 804 people per year died in bicycle accidents [2]. While promoting cycling, how can we ensure cyclists’ safety? The author suggests the following measures.
(1) Plan and construct safe, independent bike lanes or cycle tracks, separating bicycle traffic from motor vehicle traffic to reduce accidents. Bike lanes are designated portions of streets marked for bicycles, while cycle tracks are bicycle lanes physically separated by curbs or buffers from motor traffic (Figure 2). Protected bike lanes can physically separate cyclists from motor vehicles, making cycling safer [3].
Previously, to increase urban mobility and alleviate traffic congestion, traffic lanes were repeatedly widened, and motor lanes increased. The result is streets with hardly any other users besides motor vehicles, with even sidewalks being compressed into narrow spaces, let alone dedicated bike lanes and cycle tracks. Urban planners need to shift their thinking and reallocate precious urban resources—street space—by placing pedestrians and cyclists at the core of planning, and redesigning streets to include appropriate sidewalks, dedicated bike lanes, bus lanes, and motor lanes. As Fred Kent, the protagonist of another short film screened at the festival, The Place Man, said, “If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get more cars and traffic; if you plan cities for people and places, you get more people and places.”
(2) Build urban bicycle networks. Fully consider cyclists’ needs by establishing continuous, coherent bicycle-only roads separate from high-speed motor traffic, forming an extensive bicycle network. Uninterrupted, continuous cycling routes can effectively protect cyclists and reduce accidents and fatalities. The bicycle-friendly city of Copenhagen has an extensive cycling network. Since 2012, the city has been constructing 28 radial bike superhighways from the suburbs to the city center, totaling over 500 km [4], forming a comprehensive cycling network (Figure 3).
(3) Promote traffic safety education. Educate both car drivers and cyclists on safety, raise awareness of traffic rules and road safety, and remind drivers to be mindful of cyclists on the road, encouraging respectful driving behavior. Megan, the lawyer cyclist in the film, said after extensive research: “In all 50 U.S. states, cyclists have the exact same rights and responsibilities as motor vehicle drivers under state law…yet most drivers don’t know this. They believe cyclists should either be on sidewalks or in dedicated bike lanes (if available), but never on motorways. But the truth is, except for a few rare exceptions, cyclists can ride anywhere cars are allowed to drive and have the exact same legal rights.”
(4) Improve traffic facilities and road conditions. Add bike signals, markings, reflective signs, etc., on roads to remind cyclists and drivers of traffic rules and safety precautions. Improve road conditions by repairing damaged pavement to ensure roads are smooth and clean, reducing accidents and enhancing safety.
(5) Encourage the use of safety equipment. Encourage cyclists to wear helmets, reflective vests, and gloves, and equip bicycles with warning lights to enhance safety.
(6) Promote urban traffic transformation. Transition cities from being car-centered to those where bicycles and walking are the primary modes of transportation, redesigning and repurposing city streets to be more human-centered, opening public spaces, creating places, revitalizing main street economies, reducing reliance on cars, and guiding people into the public realm, achieving a livable, sustainable urban transformation. Copenhagen is a model city of successful transformation. “Since 1962, when the main shopping street Strøget was converted into a pedestrian street, the entire street and public open space system has gradually been reshaped. Copenhagen’s policy is to prioritize pedestrians and bicycles. There are still trucks and cars on the streets, but they have their designated places, just like pedestrians and bicycles do.” [5] (Figure 4).
The film introduces another exemplary city—Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, which is also a city where cycling and walking are the main modes of transportation. Amsterdam has an extensive cycling network, and the city’s planning and transportation policies encourage cycling and walking. Many streets and squares are designed to be cycling and pedestrian-friendly, and the city center offers abundant bicycle parking facilities. This city design, centered around cycling and walking, helps reduce traffic congestion, lower carbon emissions, and improve residents’ health and quality of life.
One important catalyst for Amsterdam becoming today’s “bicycle utopia” was its reimagining, redesigning, and replanning of streets to be more than just thoroughfares, but to evolve into places of play and platforms for display (Figure 5). As the narration in The Engine Inside says: “When we change the way we look at the world and shift our perspective, a new way of doing things emerges. Cycling can transcend sport and become a form of artistic expression. It is a creative act with no other purpose that can bring immense joy and simple pleasure. Our cities are far more than just places to live, work, and pass through. The streets themselves can become a canvas.”
The Spanish coastal city of Pontevedra is also a model of transformation into a “people-centered” livable city. In 1999, shortly after Miguel Fernández Lores was elected mayor, he began limiting the number of cars entering and parking in the old town, defending the rights of pedestrians and cyclists and supporting them in reclaiming urban space. Lores stated: “At that time, the city was unlivable. It was a real ‘car warehouse’—noisy, polluted, with no public space, and people couldn’t freely occupy any remaining space.” [6] (Figure 6).
Despite opposition, after several decades of continuous efforts by Mayor Lores, now in his seventh term, walking and cycling have become the most common modes of transportation for Pontevedra residents, with about 90% traveling by foot, bicycle, or scooter. Greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 70%, significantly improving people’s quality of life and health. Bicycles are one of the key elements of the future sustainable city concept. Architects and urban planners need to change their thinking and reconstruct “human-centered city streets”—placing people and bicycles at the core of design, altering existing road layouts and functions, widening sidewalks, adding bike lanes, improving public transportation systems, setting up bus lanes, enhancing pedestrian-friendliness and street humanization, increasing green spaces, setting up buffer zones and street trees, creating public spaces, revitalizing main street economies, etc., to create more livable, sustainable, and socially and economically vibrant urban environments.
References and Videos
[1] The Engine Inside. https://www.engineinsidefilm.com.[2] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Traffic Safety Facts Annual Report Tables, National Statistics [EB/OL]. (2023) [2024-07-25]. https://cdan.dot.gov/tsftables/tsfar.htm#
[3] World Resources Institute. Designing Safer Cities Through Urban and Street Design: Guidelines and Case Studies Version 1.0 [R/OL]. [2024-07-25]. https://wri.org.cn/sites/default/files/2022-01/cities-safer-by-design-full-CN_0.pdf.
[4] Wang Zhuo’er. How to Effectively Plan a Bicycle System Amid Thousands of Roads [EB/OL]. (2020) [2024-07-05]. https://www.archiposition.com/items/e59b528714.
[5] Barnett J, Beasley L. Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs [M]. Washington, Covelo, London: Island Press, 2015: 152.
[6] Alonso S. The Mayor Who Prioritized Pedestrians Before it Was Cool [OL]. (2023) [2024-07-25]. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-27/a-car-free-streets-trailblazer-for-pedestrians-in-spain-ask-a-mayor.