Mesoscale Infrastructures and Uneven Development: Bicycle Sharing Systems in the United States as “Already Splintered” Urbanism

Abstract

Public–private transportation megaprojects such as toll roads and rail networks have received attention as expressions of neoliberal urban development processes, but what we call “mesoscale” mobility infrastructures have become increasingly common in the United States. Such infrastructures are large enough to have systemic qualities (e.g., fixed nodes, instrumented networks, and operational requirements) and complex institutional arrangements but small enough in cost and impact that they do not systemically transform urbanization patterns. In this article, we analyze one such mesoscale infrastructure system, bicycle sharing, across three urban regions in the United States: Austin, Texas, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. We argue that bicycle sharing systems in the United States have three key features: (1) widespread expectations of fiscal self-sufficiency restrict their geographical reach to urban centers; (2) they largely follow existing patterns of racialized uneven development, leading to major service gaps; and (3) their implementation involves contingent institutional configurations that create modest openings for steering them in more equitable directions. At the same time, newer venture capital–funded “dockless” competitors have exploited the coverage gaps of station-based bike sharing without departing from their basic market-driven logic. Mesoscale infrastructural experimentation is increasingly central to efforts to increase mobility options in the United States but, when implemented within existing urban political economies, tends to produce scales of infrastructure that are at odds with more substantive forms of mobility justice.