Earlier this year, the Ithaca Police Department cheerily announced “increased enforcement” of city ordinances forbidding, among other common activities, cycling, roller-skating and skateboarding in the Ithaca Commons. Cyclists, ever the punching bag of suburbanites, are now relegated to the forks of Route 79 if they wish to visit the Commons: busy, three-lane roads lacking in any cyclist protection. The alternative option, the so-called “Bike Boulevard” (Tioga Street), which consists of a couple of speed-bumps, and naturally, no dedicated bike lane isn’t much better. Once they reach the Commons, there are, in a mocking twist, myriad bike racks, all in view but embarrassingly unreachable by bike, forcing a dismount and a walk — a visceral reminder that steel companions are second-class citizens here. In comments relating to this crackdown, Deputy City Manager Dominick Recckio claimed it was all part of an effort to make the Commons a more “welcoming, inclusive space.” If we want the Commons to be more inclusive, why not start with cyclists?
Recckio further characterised cycling as having the potential to “detract from how [the Commons] feels as a shared space,” a place he describes as a mix of a “park [and] a pedestrian mall.” Before my response, I must emphasize that I don’t doubt that he, or any of the stakeholders involved, have anything but an honest desire to improve Ithaca, and I can only commend this goal. I take issue with the policies and philosophy (mis)guiding them towards this goal.
The Commons is neither a park nor a mall; it is the urban center of a small town, a place that should be the nexus of all activity, most aptly described as a high street. To see it like a mall or a park, an intricately maintained area you consciously “visit” misunderstands how a great downtown emerges — organically. Malls and parks are places that are managed by singular entities, exerting unitary control and enforcing a strict set of rules, whereas high streets and the culture defining it, emerge from the many different businesses, people, and activities that frequent it. Developing a thriving community and a healthy culture on the Commons cannot be done by enforcing a list of rules and trying to manifest a singular vision.
Thriving urban centers, such as those found in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain and to a lesser extent, the UK, are defined by their variety: trams cutting through piazzas, cyclists weaving down cobbled narrow streets, people on their way to work, on their way home, restaurateurs serving their boozy patrons, buskers playing ballads, seedy purveyors of counterfeit merchandise, teens messing around on skateboards, beggars with their cardboard signs. Not every character in the scene I’ve painted will be perfectly happy with the presence of their fellow cast members, but by supplanting control with a level of tolerance and liberality enables a lively and desirable urbanism which isn’t possible to achieve by expansion and enforcement on city ordinances. You can’t legislate great urban culture into being.
The fact that we are talking about an area called “Commons” further supports this argument: it is a common area, a place used by all and owned by none (in England, the word means almost exactly this: land over which all people share the right to roam and graze livestock). For it to be a common “shared space,” a much larger tolerance for others is needed — cyclists (and other wheeled citizens) included. Some rules are needed everywhere: I’m not arguing for an anarchist downtown, just a maximally free and safe one. To achieve a revitalised Commons with energy, with hustle and bustle, and with life, you have to accept that there will be exactly that: life. You might not like everything you see, but in exchange, you’ll get a downtown you love.
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Wyatt Sell '27 is a (British) student studying Electrical & Computer Engineering. His fortnightly column, An Englishman's Perspective critiques popular social, cultural and political phenomena at Cornell and beyond. He can be reached at wsell@cornellsun.com.
