What It Takes to Make City Solutions Go Viral
One city’s innovation on housing, migration or extreme weather doesn’t always spread to others. A new initiative helps municipalities learn, adapt and implement good ideas from other places.
Bikeshare has taken off globally. But it wasn’t always a popular idea.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergWhen a ragtag group of 1960s Amsterdam activists tried bikesharing in the city as a statement against consumerism, the stunt failed spectacularly. Police cracked down because the unattended, unlocked bicycles scattered around the city were against the law, and local politicians wanted little to do with the counterculture movement behind the plan.
Sixty years later, racks of shared bikes are as abundant and mainstream worldwide as Starbucks coffee shops. State of the art docking and payment technology have allowed nearly 3,000 sharing systems to flourish in virtually every continent. Last year, New York City observed the 10th anniversary of its Citi Bike program, inspired by the Paris model that had impressed former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Today, Citi Bike has 27,000 bicycles and more than 1,700 stations in the city.