Unequal Realities and Racialized Geographies: Men of Color Biking in Portland

Published In

Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

2023

Subjects

Social justice, Race relations, Cyclists

Abstract

The city of Portland has developed a national reputation as a bike-friendly city as a result of numerous citywide bike infrastructure plans, yet as is true across the country, ridership data indicates that people of color make up a small portion of regular cyclists. The current study draws from 25 interviews with men of color bicyclists in Portland, Oregon, and builds upon the work of Black and Latinx geographers, mobility justice scholars, and the scholarship on gentrification to explore the racialized nature of public cycling spaces. We use our data to argue that: (1) men of color bicyclists experience public cycling spaces as exclusionary; (2) uneven spatial dynamics, or racialized geographies, generate a sense of “out of place-ness” for bicyclists of color. Though some scholarship has considered the quantitative aspects of racialized bicycling inequalities, this paper is the first to elucidate the qualitative experiences of men of color bicyclists.

Rights

© 2023 Urban Affairs Association

Locate the Document

PSU Affiliates:
Subscription Access

All others may use their local interlibrary loan service, or access via the publisher:
https://doi.org/10.1080/26884674.2023.2279321

DOI

10.1080/26884674.2023.2279321

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40990

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS