Conceived in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass began as a mass bicycle ride for
cyclists to reclaim public space from motorists in car-centric California. Riders, often numbering
in the hundreds, aimed to fill the streets so completely with bikes that cars would be displaced
and create a temporary safe space. Utilizing their ability to be an “organized coincidence,” the
movement challenged an expectation of urban car dominance. Critical Masses complicate an
American legacy of suburbanization, land grabbing, development, and urban disinvestment,
which continues today. By drawing on readings about enacted landscapes, car-centric urbanism,
and examining bicycle movements as a form of spatial resistance, it becomes clear that Critical
Mass is more than a group of people riding bikes together, but rather a form of community care.
Here, I argue that Critical Masses are an integral tool for communities to challenge capitalist,
individualistic landscapes in urban environments and instead create conditions for historically
marginalized people to thrive and have fun.

To begin to understand what Critical Mass is pushing back against, one must examine the
context for how cities got to be the way they are. After the New Deal, federal policies were
created to secure people houses as a response to the Great Depression. The Homeowner’s Loan
Commission (HOLC), produced guidelines for banks to give loans to families, creating a system

called redlining, which deemed areas with low- income people of color high risk and white
affluent neighborhoods low risk (Marsh, 197). Real estate brokers preyed on white racism and
fear by telling white homeowners that black families had moved onto their street, and they
should move to the suburbs before their property values decreased, causing white flight and
urban disinvestment. Simultaneously, interstate highway systems were being constructed in case
of a foreign threat, which facilitated movement via automobiles for white people to take their
money to the suburbs. These roads were built at the expense of people’s homes, land, and
communities, including Native American reservations, and people in power made racialized and
class-based decisions about which communities were expendable. These interconnected
circumstances contribute to an understanding of American urban development and landscapes as
being tied to individualism, racism, capitalism, and the displacement of certain groups. The
legacy of these decisions affects mobility access, health problems, and climate change, which
disproportionately influence communities depending on the history of their redlining status,
segregation, and disinvestment.

Today, cities like Los Angeles and New York are characterized by taxis, traffic, and loud
beeping, revealing the centrality of cars to our culture. Banham writes, “The degree of freedom
and conveniences offered to all but a small (but now conspicuous) segment of the population is
such that no Angeleno will be in a hurry to sacrifice it for the higher efficiency but drastically
lowered convenience and freedom of choice of any high-density public rapid-transit system”
(Banham, 217). The use of the car is directly tied to American capitalist thinking related to
individualism, speed, and modernity. The internalized need to be constantly productive results in
a culture that deems cars necessary for movement and creates an architecture and landscape that
tries to cement this. Although bicycles have grown in popularity, they still remain a fringe mode

of transportation, since navigating a US city by bike for inexperienced riders can be a death
sentence. The reality of sharing the road with a huge volume of automobiles, driven by
increasingly aggressive drivers in bigger vehicles, is frightening (Furness, 4). Critical Mass seeks
to bring more attention to bicycling as an efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to
cars, advocating for safer streets and pushing against inequitable access to the city enshrined in
capitalist, individualistic landscapes.

Critical Mass’s first ride was called a ‘Commute Clog’ and sought to make clear the
status of streets as the closest thing to public space, even though they were so dominated by
private automobiles and parking that use of the space was predetermined (Boom: A Journal of
California, 82). The monthly rides spread organically, through word of mouth and printed
pamphlets, letters, and visitors who would bring it back to their home communities elsewhere
(Boom: A Journal of California, 84). As the internet became more accessible, emails, listservs,
and websites further spread the idea of the ride around the United States and up to Canada
(Boom: A Journal of California, 85). The organizational style, as I experienced in the Pittsburgh
Critical Mass, is non-hierarchical, with planning meetings widely posted online where anyone
can show up and have input. Half protest, half celebration of bicycling, it is common for Massers
to dress up in elaborate costumes, wear funky hats, decorate their bikes, and blast music
throughout the streets, engaging in joy as part of their reclaiming of the streets. At Pittsburgh
Critical Mass, the ride begins with socialization, tabling, and announcements related to current
events, upcoming protests, or mutual aid requests- which everyone is invited to share. Before
setting off, a series of call and response chants are led by individuals, most prominently: “Who
keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” The ride uses tactics including corking, where riders block side
traffic like on-ramps, oncoming routes, and merge points to protect the mass riders from

encroaching motorists. Critical mass rides also utilize funeral-style procession, meaning that if
one person makes it through an intersection, the rest of the hundred to thousand other riders will
follow, preventing the bicyclists from getting split up and ensuring safety. It is in these moments
that riders may encounter hostile drivers hurling threats, ironically maddened because “their”
roads are being taken over. Ultimately, there is euphoria involved in getting physical exercise
with neighbors from all different backgrounds, seeing the sites of the city in a way that feels
directly tied to the physical landscape, feeling every incline, pothole, or crack in the road, all as
part of a group advocating for a better future and looking out for each other. As Chris Carlsson,
one of the original founders of CM, says, “Bicycling puts us into the life of our streets and
connects us to friends, neighbors, and strangers in ways that the car culture has blocked for so
long” (Boom: A Journal of California, 85). Critical mass acts as spatial resistance in the context
of urban development and creates a space for residents to write their own hopes for how the
physical environment can serve their needs into the streets and neighborhoods around them.

Critical Mass challenges capitalist, individualistic landscapes in urban environments
through civil disobedience, pushing against top-down control and surveillance, as well as
becoming a site of community care. In the context of landscapes that have been informed by
racism, classism, and sexism, at the intersection of a perceived need to make money, the resistive
actions of CM disrupt the very fabric of urban infrastructure that is hostile and reclaim public
spaces to care for one another. At Pittsburgh Critical Mass, there is a large emphasis placed on
listening to the most marginalized members of our community, including black, trans, and
disabled people who are most targeted by urban policies and architecture that limit autonomy,
mobility, and a feeling of belonging. At tabling sessions and conversations before the ride,
people walk around tuning people’s bikes up for free and distributing literature about where to

access food kitchens, bail funds, and rent assistance. This rhetoric of concern for one another
continues into the ride, where people take music requests, remind each other to drink water, and
strike up conversations. After the ride has concluded, people are encouraged to bike home in
groups to ensure everyone gets back safely. These informal methods act as spatial resistance by
refusing to conform to car-centric, environmentally damaging methods of movement, which
disproportionately contribute to climate change effects and health problems like asthma for
neighbors in black and brown communities. It challenges ideas that public space is only meant
for certain people at certain hours of the day and instead creates a place where anyone is
welcome to exist, move their body, and act as a leader. Connected to the concept of “walking as
resistance,” CM’s work also pushes against surveillance technology that again,
disproportionately polices low-income, black neighborhoods due to the legacy of redlining.

Driving in a car around the city involves navigating a landscape of urban space that tracks
license plates, employs red light cameras, and costs money due to gas and insurance, while also
emphasizing individuality and speed. Biking is lower-cost and resists the expectation that public
space is for purely economic reasons, while resisting surveillance due to the ability for bicyclists
to disrupt predictable patterns where they would typically be tracked or followed. In addition, it
challenges control of time and speed, slowing down the pace of life and reclaiming time and
space for leisure and activities that don’t cost or make money for anyone. Biking and pedestrians
also provide eyes on the street, which acts as a method of community resistance and care because
it is a bottom-up, natural surveillance program that creates a sense of safety and community
oversight that hierarchical control does not.

Ultimately, Critical Mass is a symbol and tool of dissent that successfully works to mend
the relationships between people and their landscapes, which have been negatively impacted by

histories of inequitable, racialized, and classed policies seeking to make money and lift certain
people up while pushing others down. Although it is hard to generalize across a large movement
that encompasses many parts of the world, dealing with their own exploitative histories, CM
positively and intersectionally calls attention to longstanding urban issues that affect the
disempowered in London, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Seoul, and more. Many members additionally take
part in legislative lobbying and work to put pressure on lawmakers and those in power from
multiple directions, trying to make long-term change. Critical Mass serves as a way to
understand how we can reshape cities to be more accommodating to multiple forms of transit,
fighting against the monolith of capitalist, car-centric environments, and creating communities of
care.

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