Guns Germs & Bikes

Nobody rides bikes in Buenos Aries. As David Byrne writes of Buenos Aries: "Is it so uncool to ride a bike here that even messengers find other ways of getting around?"

David Byrne's Hypothesis: "I think the idea of cycling is simply off the radar here. The cycling meme hasn’t been dropped into the mix, or it never took hold. I am inclined to agree with Jared Diamond, who claims in his book Collapse that people develop cultural affinities for certain foods, ways of getting around, clothes, and habits of being that become so ingrained that they will, in his telling, persist in maintaining their habits even to the piont of driving themselves and sometimes their whole civilization to extinction."

Tom Vanderbilt then asks: What is "the mixture of infrastructure, social norms, behavioral change, incentives, and whatever else is needed to get a bike culture off the ground"?

More --> How We Drive: Guns, Germs, & Bikes.