Help Us Publish Cycling Cities: The Minneapolis Experience

Who We Are:

At Cycling Cities, we share the stories of how and why some cities have become the world’s most sustainable and functional bicycle capitals. As a non-profit organization, our mission is to empower historians, cycling advocates, and authors to bring these stories to the world. Together, we aim to create an intercontinental network of expertise, providing local solutions to global challenges.

The Project:

Cycling Cities: The Minneapolis Experience explores nearly 150 years of cycling in Minneapolis, using photographs, maps, newspaper articles, advertisements, and documents to uncover the true story of people on bikes from the 1880s to today. From turn-of-the-century wheelmen, to cycling workers, to kids on bikes, to university students, to bike messengers, to policymakers, it's people who tell the true story. Bikes were more than technologies. They were tools for the people who rode: sometimes adventure vehicles, sometimes a last resort, always present. The meanings riders projected onto their bikes shifted alongside a changing city and society, like this 1901 scene at the corner of the now Nicollet Mall and 5th Street South (photo via Hennepin County Library).

https://www.cyclingcities.info/your-city-next/cycling-cities-the-minneapolis-experience/

Why This Matters:

Understanding American cycling cities calls us to look into the past, mobilizing histories of change to empower change today. How we choose to move around our cities is complex and personal. Our decisions rely on policies and infrastructure that often reflect who has power and who doesn't. The same was true a hundred years ago. The history of people and bicycles in Minneapolis tells a story of profound social, political, and technological change: one that offers lessons for elevating cycling today. Help us bring forward this exciting project--our first, but hopefully not last, U.S. cycling city!

How Your Support Helps:

By supporting our project, you are helping to bring this critical research into the public eye. Every book donation helps us provide important learning materials to libraries and schools, promoting the idea of sustainable, bike-friendly communities. Together, we can create cycling-friendly neighborhoods and support a network of people dedicated to this mission, including academics, policymakers, advocacy groups, artists, and students.

100EUR --> Top-tier Supporter

Personal copy, donated copy to a library or school, honorable mention in our pages and online

50EUR --> Supporter

Personal copy, donated copy to a library or school

35EUR --> Page turner

Personal copy

20EUR --> Donator

Donated copy to a library or school