I've been wanting to respond to this thread for a while and now have some time to do so. I'd like to take this conversation in a different direction.
At Community Cycles in Boulder we have a "traditional" non profit structure. We have paid staff, a board of directors, we sell bikes, pay rent, have a membership program and other traditional non-profit kinds of structure. This is of course very different than the way some of the anarcho-punk shops are run. It's clear that we have very different ways about getting people on bikes but the result is the same; bikes are diverted from the waste stream and they get used. And I think we all want people to reap the benefits a bike-centric lifestyle can offer.
I'd love to see more research about how our work affects peoples lives.
I'm sure we all have stories about people who've come to our shops and
it transformed their lives. But for each story we hear there are
probably a dozen others we haven't. At Community Cycles we do a follow
up survey six weeks after someone completes the Earn-A-Bike program.
http://www.communitycycles.org/index.php?option=com_rsform&formId=10&...
This gives us some indication of how the bikes are being used but it doesn't paint a complete picture. I'm personally very interested in how bikes can help people get out of debt and poverty. The average annual cost of owning and operating an auto is around $9K. Minimum wage in Colorado is $7.24 an hour, at 40 hrs a week that's $14K annually. I'm interested in knowing more about what it looks like when someone living in poverty switches from the auto to biking, walking, mass transit, car-sharing....
I'm also interested in the affects of people living bike-centric lifestyles has on local economies. Living car-free, I do 98% of my daily activities within a three mile radius. In this area I spend my money at all the usual places; grocery stores, hardware stores, coffee shops, restaurants, specialty shops... Some of them are local some are chains but the collection of local sales tax is the same. What is the impact on local schools, libraries, infrastructure and other local government services? What happens to local non profits, community organizations and businesses when more people live bike-centric?
And then there's a whole array of topics that we could study; quality of life, health, academic changes in school children, community engagement, air and water quality, corporate power... Like I said we may run our shops differently but our work has the same affect on peoples lives. I think the more we understand these changes the better we can advocate for bike-centric lifestyles.
Thanks for reading.
Ride On!
Rich
On 8/27/2010 11:36 AM, andrew bushaw wrote:
First of all thank you all for your input. I guess I see this project as being a good way to inform future decisions on federation of sorts. I think I'm pretty much sold on doing this research as my thesis. As mentioned previously, this will focus mostly on organizational structures and financial arrangements to determine both quantitatively and qualitatively a picture of the movement that is being built. My hopes are that this will be useful to both new shops trying to figure out which arrangements would best suit their particular context as well as the other stated goal of identifying potential needs involved with building something larger. I think some really good points have been made on this thread about some of the difficulties in that endeavor, namely the autonomous and decentralized nature of CBS's as a whole. However, I don't think that these charecteristics necissarily precludes possible organizing of something larger, and may in fact turn out to be an asset, but it is certainly an important to keep in mind. Federations have been used succesfully for coordination of decentralized, autonomous organizations throughout history, and I think there is definitely potential for com bike shops in one way or another. I would definitely be interested in being in on more specific discussions of the larger entity, but will keep most of that out of my research as that is something that needs to be hashed out amongst people, not in theory. Anyways, thanks again for all the input and encouragement and I look forward to info gathering over the next year. -Andrew
On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 12:02 PM, fallen.arrows <tito@fallenarrows.biz mailto:tito@fallenarrows.biz> wrote:
ainsley, im on the same page. working on getting some of sopo's ideas formalized and onto collectives/wiki. count me in on, let me know what needs doing. tito @ Fallen.Arrows Direct to Garment Printing Services 858 Dekalb Ave Suite C Atlanta, Ga 30307 cell. 678.907.3892 work. 404.635.6367 www.fallenarrows.com <http://www.fallenarrows.com> www.fallenarrows.biz <http://www.fallenarrows.biz> Fallen Arrows Print and Design is a custom order no-minimum-necessary print shop in Atlanta, Georgia that is dedicated to building a creative community. On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 10:55 AM, <thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org>> wrote: Send Thethinktank mailing list submissions to thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank@bikecollectives.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> You can reach the person managing the list at thethinktank-owner@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-owner@bikecollectives.org> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Thethinktank digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Thethinktank Digest, Vol 48, Issue 9 (fallen.arrows) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:52:29 -0700 From: "fallen.arrows" <tito@fallenarrows.biz <mailto:tito@fallenarrows.biz>> To: thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank@bikecollectives.org> Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Thethinktank Digest, Vol 48, Issue 9 Message-ID: <AANLkTin2Ngz3L_OgTEQ9V34OXjHigEMbFUWFtHpWWauP@mail.gmail.com <mailto:AANLkTin2Ngz3L_OgTEQ9V34OXjHigEMbFUWFtHpWWauP@mail.gmail.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Andrew and ainsley, myself and sopo are into it. Andrew, I spoke with sara about an international incubator program. I'm currently on vaca, but ill be home soon and we can go from there. Glad there is lots of positive energy around this issue. tito On Aug 22, 2010 2:13 PM, <thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org>> wrote: Send Thethinktank mailing list submissions to thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank@bikecollectives.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.org> You can reach the person managing the list at thethinktank-owner@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank-owner@bikecollectives.org> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Thethinktank digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Community Bike Shops and academic research. (andrew bushaw) 2. Re: Bike!Bike! 2010 Notes (Angel York) 3. Re: Bike!Bike! 2010 Notes (Geoffrey B) 4. Re: Community Bike Shops and academic research. (Ainsley Naylor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:15:53 -0500 From: andrew bushaw <andrew@fmbikeworkshop.org <mailto:andrew@fmbikeworkshop.org>> To: The Think Tank <thethinktank@bikecollectives.org <mailto:thethinktank@bikecollectives.org>> Subject: [TheThinkTank] Community Bike Shops and academic research. Message-ID: <AANLkTim-s=uFDzPMRXW_8=0pEzfm=rUr2zLGk7tLaEg8@mail.gmail.com <mailto:rUr2zLGk7tLaEg8@mail.gmail.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Community Bike folk, I'm trying to settle on a topic for a masters thesis and I'm interested in doing research into the organizational, legal and funding structures of community bike shops. I know that at bikebike minneapolis there was a session called "Plan Voltron" about creating a "cooperative of cooperatives" and some of the folks from our bike shop that made it to toronto mentioned this was also a topic of conversation this year. My first thought is that a qualitative and quantitative overview or survey of community bike shops would give a solid base for further work on this idea by identifying needs, wants, strengths, characteristics, etc. that would be useful to organizing linkages between shops. My main focus of study so far has been the "worker centers" movement, which seem to parallel community bike shops in some interesting ways, such as being relatively new, decentralized, and fast growing. I think this ( http://smlr.rutgers.edu/Unions/FineWorker.pdf) study that was done of workercenters would serve as a good model for one of community bike shops since it's central aim is to be useful for further movement building. So, now to the questions: 1. Does anyone know of any research done on community bike shops, academic or otherwise? 2. Would you see this as potentially useful information? Useful enough to participate in a survey of your shop? 3. If so, what kinds of things would you like to see research on? I would be doing this using both traditional research methods as well as more "strategic investigation" techniques, meaning that perspective would be from within the movement as a participant and their would be a specific strategic "usefulness" for the end result. Wish I could have been at bikebike to pitch this idea personally, but I know sara talked to a few folks about it. Thanks, Andrew FM Community Bicycle Workshop