IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjouxx/v9y2016i2p135-147.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Large-scale tactical urbanism: the Denver bike share system

Author

Listed:
  • Wesley E. Marshall
  • Andrew L. Duvall
  • Deborah S. Main

Abstract

How did one of the most historically automobile-dependent US cities end up with the first large-scale modern US bike-sharing system? The story reveals that it is less about transportation demand planning and engineering and more about the principles of what has been termed tactical urbanism . The tactical urbanism movement revolves around the idea that temporary interventions can help one understand what interventions might work in a particular context and lay the foundation for more permanent ones. That the first large-scale bike-sharing system in the US began as such an intervention is quite remarkable and illustrative of the potential of this strategy to build public aspiration and political will via temporary, short-term empirical success. Beginning with preparations for the 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver, Colorado, this paper details what went into creating the temporary Freewheel!n bike-share system and how that was able to be leveraged into a permanent bike-sharing system, Denver B-Cycle, two years later. Consistent with the characteristics of tactical urbanism, the partnerships formed with the temporary DNC implementation served as a catalyst. The paper then identifies lessons that other cities can learn and apply in similar large-scale tactical urbanism interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Wesley E. Marshall & Andrew L. Duvall & Deborah S. Main, 2016. "Large-scale tactical urbanism: the Denver bike share system," Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 135-147, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rjouxx:v:9:y:2016:i:2:p:135-147
    DOI: 10.1080/17549175.2015.1029510
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17549175.2015.1029510
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17549175.2015.1029510?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shirgaokar, Manish & Reynard, Darcy & Collins, Damian, 2021. "Using twitter to investigate responses to street reallocation during COVID-19: Findings from the U.S. and Canada," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 300-312.
    2. Kwiatkowski Michał Adam, 2024. "Bicycle critical mass events 30 years on – are they an urban mobility movement or a bicycle festival?," Environmental & Socio-economic Studies, Sciendo, vol. 12(2), pages 28-39.
    3. Paulo Silva, 2016. "Tactical urbanism: Towards an evolutionary cities’ approach?," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 43(6), pages 1040-1051, November.
    4. Sunio, Varsolo & Mateo-Babiano, Iderlina, 2022. "Pandemics as ‘windows of opportunity’: Transitioning towards more sustainable and resilient transport systems," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 175-187.
    5. Anna Martínez & Xavier Martín & Jordi Gordon, 2021. "Matrix of Architectural Solutions for the Conflict between Transport Infrastructures, Landscape and Urban Habitat along the Mediterranean Coastline: The Case of the Maresme Region in Barcelona, Spain," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(18), pages 1-27, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rjouxx:v:9:y:2016:i:2:p:135-147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rjou20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.