{"id":1167,"date":"2009-11-03T09:10:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T15:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2009-11-03T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2009-11-03T15:10:09","slug":"bike-sharing-is-too-bourgeois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/11\/03\/bike-sharing-is-too-bourgeois\/","title":{"rendered":"bike-sharing is too bourgeois"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"img-link\">In 2007, Paris initiated a bike-sharing program to\u00a0 provide &#8220;<\/span>an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus&#8221;. The program purchased 20,600 specially-made bicycles, 80 percent of which have now been vandalized or stolen. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/31\/world\/europe\/31bikes.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a> reports:<span class=\"img-link\"> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2038\/2520301962_e48a673964_m.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Freeride\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,\u201d Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. \u201cThe V\u00e9lib\u2019 was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The heavy, sandy-bronze V\u00e9lib\u2019 bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the \u201cbobos,\u201d or \u201cbourgeois-boh\u00e8mes,\u201d the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A sociologist comments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, \u201cOne must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,\u201d referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>He said he believed there was social revolt behind V\u00e9lib\u2019 vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,\u201d Mr. Marzloff said. \u201cThere is an element of negligence that means, \u2018We don\u2019t have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it\u2019s a huge pain, we don\u2019t have cars, and when we do, it\u2019s too expensive and too far.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Despite these setbacks, the bike-sharing will continue:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Still, with more than 63 million rentals since the program was begun in mid-2007, the V\u00e9lib\u2019 is an established part of Parisian life, and the program has been extended to provide 4,000 V\u00e9lib\u2019s in 29 towns on the city\u2019s edges.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2007, Paris initiated a bike-sharing program to\u00a0 provide &#8220;an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus&#8221;. The program purchased 20,600 specially-made bicycles, 80 percent of which have now been vandalized or stolen. The New York Times reports: \u201cThe symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[65,39110,1046,125],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-environment","tag-inequality","tag-international","tag-urban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1169,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}