The Coming Tsunami of Bikes

Bike sharing has become a global phenomenon, with companies that didn’t even exist a few years ago, like Ofo, Mobike, and Bluegogo renting some 20 million bikes a day in China. And these private-sector companies are now coming to America. Renting in a little more than one day the number of bikes rented in the U.S. last year, these bike-sharing operations have a business model that floods cities with inexpensive bikes at a very low – or no - cost. Whether pervasive and nearly free bike sharing turns Americans into cyclists, it will have a huge impact on our streets and public realm, with more dedicated bike lanes, parking lots, and support infrastructure. This will change not only how Americans move around, but also how American cities look and function. Tom Fisher

Dutch Design

I spent a week in and around Amsterdam, Holland, getting my fill of one of the great cities of the world. Two things stood out as lessons for the United States. First, that city has made biking an integral part of its infrastructure, with streets layered with different paving for pedestrians, bikes, cars, and trams. While sometimes seemingly chaotic, those multi-modal streets are where the rest of the world is heading. Second, that city has some of the most sophisticated multi-family housing in the world, with mostly well-designed, multi-story buildings allowing for a wide variety of sizes and types of apartments, stores, and offices behind simple, well-detailed exteriors. The best of Dutch housing will be the subject of an exhibition next academic year in Rapson Hall. Tom Fisher

Design and the Liberal Arts

I gave a keynote address on design thinking and the liberal arts to the Associations of Departments of English and of Foreign Languages Midwest meeting and joined my colleagues Virajita Singh and Remi Douah in leading afternoon design-thinking workshops. The workshops generated a lot of creative ideas, such as the “gamification” of the liberal arts in which students would read literature in order to play educational games. And I argued, In the keynote, that while STEM fields have overshadowed the liberal arts, the former have triggered their own demise as repetitive and predictive knowledge gets converted to software. What can’t be digitized?  The creative and caring skills of a liberal-arts education.  Tom Fisher