One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Sporting)

Although millions of people in the United States love to ride bicycles for exercise or leisure, statistics show that only 1% of the total U.S. population ride bicycles for transportation--and barely half as many use bikes to commute to work. In his original and exciting book, One Less Car, Zack Furness examines what it means historically, culturally, socioeconomically, and politically to be a bicycle transportation advocate/activist. Presenting an underground subculture of bike enthusiasts who aggressively resist car culture, Furness maps out the cultural trajectories between mobility, technology, urban space and everyday life. He connects bicycling to radical politics, public demonstrations, environmentalism, alternative media production, as well as to the development of community programs throughout the world. One Less Car also positions the bicycle as an object with which to analyze and critique some of the dominant cultural and political formations in the U.S., particularly those connecting mobility to race, class and gender privilege. For Furness, bicycling is not just a way of getting from points A to B, it is a means for rethinking the world around us.

In the series Sporting, edited by Amy Bass