A Culture of Positive Change
October 5th, 2023
I wanted to be a better environmentalist, so I decided to start riding a bicycle to get around. Now, I’m not a cyclist. I have limited experience riding a bike, I don’t know much about bike maintenance, and I live in the suburbs. The closest bicycle repair shop is pretty far away. I started feeling a bit discouraged.
The problem is, this area wasn’t built to prioritize people who use bicycles for transportation. Environmentalism often focuses on our personal choices, like riding a bike, or buying local food, or creating less trash, which are all good things to do if you can. But if it’s really hard to do any of that stuff, only the most passionate and well-equipped people will end up doing it. If we made it easy for people to ride bikes everywhere, a lot more people would do it.
I think the biggest changes we can make are not in the choices we make as individuals, but the things we can do when we form communities and cultures that incentivize environmentally-friendly choices, and support each other in being able to make those choices. So, I decided to focus my energy on building that community and culture, along with anyone I can find who will join me.
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October 5th, 2023
Comic Text
I wanted to be a better environmentalist, so I decided to start riding a bicycle to get around. Now, I’m not a cyclist. I have limited experience riding a bike, I don’t know much about bike maintenance, and I live in the suburbs. The closest bicycle repair shop is pretty far away. I started feeling a bit discouraged.
The problem is, this area wasn’t built to prioritize people who use bicycles for transportation. Environmentalism often focuses on our personal choices, like riding a bike, or buying local food, or creating less trash, which are all good things to do if you can. But if it’s really hard to do any of that stuff, only the most passionate and well-equipped people will end up doing it. If we made it easy for people to ride bikes everywhere, a lot more people would do it.
I think the biggest changes we can make are not in the choices we make as individuals, but the things we can do when we form communities and cultures that incentivize environmentally-friendly choices, and support each other in being able to make those choices. So, I decided to focus my energy on building that community and culture, along with anyone I can find who will join me.
Next >
Taking Action With Strong Towns
Revisiting Independence
The Walk Light
Cars and Independence
The Shopping Center Disconnect
A Culture of Positive Change
A Human-Scaled Journey is a nonfiction comic I created to document my experience learning about sustainable and walkable infrastucture and related ideas. It will include a combination of informative comics and journal-style comics, as well as collaborative comics showing other people's experiences and expertise.
