by Lugo Phd Adonia E. (Author)
The intersection of advocacy, city planning, and racism
Bicycle / Race paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles--and the United States--from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity. The colonial history of southern California is interwoven through Adonia Lugo's story of growing up Chicana in Orange County, becoming a bicycle anthropologist, and co-founding Los Angeles's hallmark open streets cycling event, CicLAvia, along the way. When she takes on racism in the world of national bicycle advocacy in Washington, DC, she finds her voice and heads back to LA to organize the movement for environmental justice in active transportation. In the tradition of City of Quartz, this book will forever change the way you see Los Angeles, race and class in the United States, and the streets and people around you wherever you live.Author Biography
Cultural anthropologist Adonia E. Lugo was born and raised in traditional and unceded Acjachemen territory and now lives and works in traditional and unceded Tongva territory in Los Angeles. Adonia began investigating transportation, race, and space during her graduate studies at UC Irvine, when she co-created the Los Angeles open street event CicLAvia and the organization today known as People for Mobility Justice. Since receiving her doctorate in 2013, Adonia has applied her research on "human infrastructure" in the transition to sustainable transportation and collaborated to define the concept of "mobility justice." Microcosm published her book Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance in 2018. Adonia is Equity Research Manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and a core organizer of The Untokening. In May 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to the California Transportation Commission.