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BICYCLE CULTURE AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURES

Kevin Henry, IDSA, Columbia College Chicago, USA, khenry@colum.eduTao Huang, PhD, IDSA, Columbia College Chicago, USA, thuang@colum.edu

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Abstract

Sustainable design need not always be about designing new green prod-ucts but instead encouraging and building on existing products and infra-structures to expand healthy aspects of industrialized cultures thus creat-ing new sustainable futures. This paper explores how such a strategy is being employed on the undergraduate level to teach design as an act of social responsibility and service.

Keywords

Product design, service design, bicycle culture, sustainable futures, social responsibility,

Introduction: Expanding Sustainable Design’s Definition

Sustainable design involves a complex set of variables including knowl-edgeable and conscientious material usage, recyclability, energy conser-vation and efficiency, knowledge of product life cycles, re-usability, and of course good design where necessary. Both there are subtler ways of designing for a sustainable future or living a more sustainable present. One such approach is not to design new products at all but to re-think existing products to incorporate them more thoroughly into the average consumer’s mindset and daily experience. With this in mind, the product design program at Columbia College Chicago began a multi-year project to research and identify ways of extending and expanding ‘bike culture’ into consumers’ daily life. And while many students were initially disap-pointed not to be designing new bikes, they soon began to understand that designing around an existing artifact posed new and exciting challenges for a new century where designing services will become as vital a part of the profession as designing products.

BICYCLE CULTURE AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURES

Tao Huang, PhD, IDSA, Columbia College Chicago, thuang@colum.eduKevin Henry, IDSA, Columbia College Chicago, khenry@colum.edu

Bike culture in Europe is quite strong espe-cially in the northern countries. Bicycles are considered a normal and vital part of the transportation equation and city planning has accommodated for bicycle storage and parking in the same way that it has been ac-commodated for in automobile cultures. Im-age above is Eindhoven, Netherlands.

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This paper will present an overview of an on-going project devoted to ‘bike culture’ as one example of a sustainable future. The project will examine what it means to design around existing paradigms so as to increase their usage and appeal while developing accompanying products in conjunc-tion with new services. The paper will provide an intimate glimpse into the the process, challenges, and outcomes of this important project as it en-ters its third year. Student work will be presented along with the research and details of the city and corporate sponsorships that have helped shape the project.

The power of Two Wheels: the Transformative Bicycle

Few people need to be convinced of the power of the bike. We have all grown up with them and experienced firsthand the freedom and mobility they provide. Learning to ride a bike is in fact one of the first significant milestones any child must reach as a first act of maturity. The bicycle was one of the first artifacts to be industrialized and subsequently impacted early methods of industrialization across many industries. Many of the early significant bike producers evolved to become the first automotive manufactures (Rover, Morris, and Skoda in Europe) while the Wright brothers, who began their business lifes manufacturing bicycles, pursued the loftier goal of air flight.1. Bikes which were also central to the women’s suffrage movement in the late 19th century2 continue to weave in and out of the popular imagination based on everything from fashion to politics and economics. At the heart of the bicycle is its ability to create culture whether that be in the form of bike messenger morals and attire in the 1980s; mountain biking bravado in the 90’s; or the current trend of retro-fitting ‘old-school bikes’ into single geared beauties in this century.

The Chicago Connection

The city of Chicago has a long and complex bike history beginning with the legendary manufacturer Schwinn which opened its doors in 1895 and came to dominate bike production across the country. Today the culture is perhaps better summed up by the counter-cultural activities of Chica-go’s chapter of Critical Mass3- an activist group of cyclists who take over the main city boulevards on the first Friday of every month to reclaim the

Bike culture in the era of the automobile has al-ways maintained a certain degree of resistance to the status quo. Bicycling often represents a lifestyle as much as a mode of transportation.

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streets thus demonstrating the possibilities and pleasures of a less ag-gressive mode of transportation. In fact many bike related organizations maintain an active presence in the city from the Active Transportation Al-liance (formerly known as The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation) to West Town Bikes whose website states their goals as follows: “....to promote bicycling in the city of Chicago, to educate youth with a focus on under-served populations, and to foster and serve Chicago’s growing bicycling community.”4 In a city known for two seasons- winter and construction- Chicago might not appear to be the most hospitable place to bike but in reality with a natural asset like Lake Michigan, a flat topography, and a strong proletarian sensibility, the city has maintained a strong relationship to that most humble mode of transportation- the bike. Against this his-torical backdrop lies another more recent and significant factor: the desire on the part of city’s mayor Richard Daley to make Chicago the ‘greenest’ city in the nation. Towards that end his administration has embarked on a plan to encourage and enable greater bike usage- especially within the inner city.

In order to achieve such a lofty goal the city has developed a massive plan (Bike 2015 Plan)5 to encourage and empower the average citizen to use bicycles as an integral part of daily transportation. The large goals include increasing bike use- ‘so that 5 percent of all trips less than five miles are by bicycle’ and to ‘reduce the number of bicycle injuries by 50 percent from current levels’. The larger plan is broken down into eight chapters as fol-lows:

1.Bikeway Network – Establish a bikeway network that serves all Chicago residents and neighborhoods.2.Bicycle-friendly Streets – Make all of Chicago’s streets safe and conve-nient for bicycling.3.Bike Parking – Provide convenient and secure short-term and long-term bike parking throughout Chicago.4.Transit – Provide convenient connections between bicycling and public transit.5.Education – Educate bicyclists, motorists, and the general public about bicycle safety and the benefits of bicycling.6.Marketing and Health Promotion – Increase bicycle use through targeted

The City of Chicago’s Bike 2015 Plan is a fol-low up of an earlier plan but it is also tied into larger greening initiatives in the city of Chi-cago.

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marketing and health promotion.7.Law Enforcement and Crash Analysis – Increase bicyclist safety through effective law enforcement and detailed crash analysis.8.Bicycle Messengers – Expand the use of bicycle messengers; improve their workplace safety and public image.

Such an ambitious and long range plan provided an excellent opportunity for us as an institution centered in the downtown area to join as a part-ner.

The Power of Passive forms of sustainability

As educators we are always searching for new ways to bring sustainability into the classroom. The topic is hard to practice given that most design projects result in models, prototypes, and presentations. Few if any stu-dent projects find a life of their own in the marketplace. After discussion, additional thinking and searching for appropriate sustainable projects, it oc-curred to us that not every sustainable project needs to involve designing new products. It made better sense to look at existing infrastructures and develop projects around them thus expanding an activity or developing a service in conjunction with that infrastructure. This would provide students an opportunity to see that problems can be more insidious and that solu-tions often involve examining lifestyle choices. Bike culture seemed like the ideal area to research around for new opportunities. Additionally we understood the enormous challenges designing a new bike would pose and realized that any concepts that might be developed would never be deployed given the enormous costs associated with product development which was antithetical to our philosophy of direct cultural engagement as designers. Nevertheless, we had to find a way to make such a project work within the context of an industrial designer’s education- there needed to be specific deliverables, a real research component, testing of con-cepts, and presentations. We rapidly put a team of design faculty on the project with professional bike experience to further refine the idea for im-mediate launch in the fall of 2007. That was the genesis of what has now become a multi-stage project around bike culture and sustainable futures that happens once a year.

The bike is the ideal mode of transportation in a city like Chicago given its flat topogra-phy. Many citizens have adapted their bi-cycles to do much more than transport an individual. Some of these adaptations have been professionally done while others dem-onstrate the d.i.y. sensibility that often ac-companies bike culture.

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Building the Right Team

As is the case with many large scale projects, a number of meetings were called to shape the project goals and desired outcomes. The team of fac-ulty included former SRAM designer Kent Solberg and Carl Boyd (a sus-tainable designer and advocate of green design). It was agreed that the Chicago Bike 2015 Plan would serve as our template and that we would seek out a city representative as the actual client. Phone calls and emails were sent out to rally the client around the idea while adding other con-stituents within the city’s rich bike advocacy network to get involved. We were fortunate that Ben Gomberg (‘bike czar’ and program coordinator of the city’s 2015 Plan) jumped on board early thus providing the much need-ed context and pressure for our students to realize that this was indeed a ‘real’ project with actual clients who had real demands. These included a series of presentations in City Hall and some ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking about ways to increase the desirability of bike usage. Another critical part-ner in the initial launch of the project was Alex Wilson of West Town Bikes. Alek combined years of experience in advocating for greater bike usage along with practical knowledge on everything from practical bike repair to serious retro-fitting of carts to extend the bicycle’s capabilities. It was a great partnership overall instilling the much needed enthusiasm to get things off the ground. After the launch of the project few students seemed to recall that they were not designing cool new bikes but instead looking for unique and crucial opportunities to increase the value and centrality of the bike as a more than a entertaining diversion or cheap and occasional mode of transportation.

Taking it to the Streets

The team of students (16 in all) were broken into four groups of four and tasked with the challenge of establishing key areas of development for the humble two-wheeler. The students quickly went about establishing a wiki for greater communication across their various subgroups in order to share the vital research each of them was uncovering. The first 5-6 weeks involved going out into the world and observing firsthand what the issues were- studying the culture like an anthropologist might. This was also a clear invitation for the students themselves to pull out their own bikes and

Faculty members Kent Solberg and Carl Boyd discuss options with students in an early dis-cussion Fall 2007.

Adair Heinz and Tune Koshy collaborate on integrating bicycles in to existing public transportation infrastructure.

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change their way of commuting thus experiencing the issues first hand and up close. Research was drawn from the world around them including the wealth of information available now online through videos of common accidents, new bike accessories, new inventions, new uses for bikes from around the planet. And of course the one-on-one meetings with the city to learn in greater detail what their plans involved so that the students could be partners rather than observers.

The teams quickly established key areas of concern that included better bike locks for the existing city infrastructure and possible new accessories to increase safety when riding. The concept for a mobile bike repair station became a focus as did better bike integration with existing modes of public transportation. The last project chose to focus on mobile bike paramedic bags. Each sector had unique challenges that required a thorough under-standing of the users and multiple contexts for use. No one could develop their project along unrealistic lines which meant the solutions needed to be realistic and cost effective or they were never going to see the light of day. The group charged with examining integration with existing public transportation, for example, could realistically retrofit a train car to accom-modate bikes but they could not redesign the train car or, for that matter, any of the existing stations. Each group proceeded with physical mock-ups (where possible) for field testing while running through the normal procedures of visualizing possible solutions through physical appearance models, computer simulations, renderings and animations or fly-throughs of possible solutions. The final presentations took place in front of city officials along with bike advocates and received a unanimous nod of ap-proval. The students left City Hall convinced that change can indeed oc-cur on a localized level.

Bike Culture 2.0

The next time the project was run it was determined early on that the process needed to be distinctly different from the previous experiment. Through conversation and discussion the original idea- designing around new bike opportunities- was pushed to a new level of refinement and evo-lution to include outside businesses that might benefit from the incorpo-ration of a bicycle into their business model. Faculty member Carl Boyd

Alex Wilson from West Town Bikes provides a lecture and demonstration on bike adapta-tion.

Kate Wimbiscus and Michael Critzon present their solutions for a better locking system and increased safety.

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A variety of images from student presentations Fall 2008 (Bike 2.0). Top left: Alek Shnayder and Edgar Ortiz working at West Town bikes to weld their cart together. Upper right: Alek Shnayder demonstrating computer model of cart for Kristy Webber Landscaping (client). Bottom left: Brian Calderon and Eric Wenzel presenting presentation video for Metropolis Coffee (client). Bottom right: students listening to student presentation for Mighty Maids (client).

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led the group of students and worked diligently to find appropriately sized and positioned partners who would take the project seriously while pro-viding students with the necessary access to their working methods so as to better understand how bikes could be incorporated into their busi-nesses. The clients who were selected included a landscaping company, a home cleaning service, a gourmet coffee shop, and TimeOut Chicago (the weekly news and entertainment magazine). The challenges this time were straightforward: develop workable solutions to encourage the clients to seriously embrace bikes as an alternative mobility choice. This involved not only understanding the clients’ needs but also figuring out low cost methods to make small batch production feasible if the project advanced that far. In every instance, except TimeOut Chicago, the companies were local with limited resources and no need to invest in large roll outs should the solutions fit their immediate needs.

Again working with Alex Wilson from West Town Bikes, the students were able to run ideas past him while receiving invaluable input on everything from concept feasibility to practical construction methods for the various prototype solutions. The students developed multiple concepts in model form first to get as many ideas out as possible and to evaluate the best potential directions. Full scale prototypes were built and tested to con-firm that they meet the sometime stringent requirements of the client. For example hauling gardening equipment on a single bike required very ac-curate balancing of the cart so that it would not be too strenuous. The range of solutions included very lightweight panniers for the house clean-ers that took full advantage of the bike geometry while maximizing space for the necessary cleaning products. Another solution was a full service art-deco inspired bike-powered cafe for dispensing coffee samples as a way to extend the companies brand identity and increase the potential cli-ent base. Each student group presented their solutions to the individual client as well as a group of faculty and interested bike advocates. Again the reception was both enthusiastic and encouraging (suggesting the pos-sibility of a real trial run in the future). The students witnessed once again the power of localized design thinking that is not about the big gesture and the shiny new product but a way to embrace a service and improve func-tionality while also encouraging both exercise and greater environmental stewardship.

Mighty Maids team presenting physical models and Kristy Webber group testing out the physical prototype and videotaping the results.

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Bike Futures in the Future (conclusion)

This project is slated to continue into the future with each incarnation dif-ferent than the last. The idea is to amass a wealth of knowledge and ideas that will seed a larger and more diverse bike culture in the near future. With each new incarnation there will need to be innovation applied to the actual design brief to differentiate the current project from past projects while still learning from earlier solutions. The department’s ultimate goal is to use these projects as a way to explore new and innovative ways to increase service design projects in the future. While designers generally think of themselves as creators of new products the reality will need to change more towards design solutions that piggyback on existing sus-tainable infrastructure and products rather than simply adding more stuff to an already overpopulated material culture. This is a challenge for us as faculty and it will be a challenge for our students as designers of the future. Finding satisfaction in tweaking something, adapting something, or even fixing something is not the same as creating something and yet this has to be part of our sustainable future- adaptation as opposed to eternal creation. It is a hard lesson to learn and one that will only occur through the small steps of projects like these. Once we have the language and necessary skills to imbue these types of projects with a life and iden-tity of their own they can hopefully compete with the kinds of projects we all associate with the profession- designing new products. And in turn these types of projects will in fact make our students even more aware of the critical nature of limited resources and the power of design to solve complex problems. If a designer really is a solver a problems, there are certainly no lack of problems in the world to solve. It may be merely a mat-ter of shifting the focus and creating the structure to make these types of problems feel real.

Bibliography

Bicycle: The History, Herlihy, David, Yale University Press ( 2004)Bike 2015 Plan (PDF), City of Chicago (2006)

Bikes are a great economical way to move about a city while also getting much needed exercise. Even in city like Chicago with its hots summers and long winters, the bike is a great mode of transportation.