Adonia Lugo took a moment to discuss her book “Bicycle/Race-Transportation: Culture and Resistance” about the intersection of transportation and social issues.
For students and San Jose residents in attendance at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library event Monday, the afternoon was an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of how identity and culture impacts transportation habits.
“There’s more going on our streets then just transportation, that the rules we live our lives by, we take that on the streets with us,” Lugo said.
Lugo earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from University of California Irvine and chose to write her dissertation about transportation and its reflection on social class, which inspired her book.
She said the book, published in 2018, is the culmination of a decade of research detailing the everyday use of ordinary transportation.
“If you base your book off a dissertation thesis, it’s probably going to be around a 10-year process,” Lugo said, explaining the project was time consuming especially with everything else happening in her life.
In the book, Lugo wrote about the importance of culture and the negative effects infrastructure can have on society and what social justice looks like in that context.
“Working towards having a set of systems and governments and culture that actually support people and find out what they’re good at and do it instead of just having to survive,” Lugo said.
Manny Uche, an urban planning graduate student, spoke about what he thought of as the biggest takeaway.
“Not knowing that bicycles were once a privileged mode for transportation and that it shouldn’t necessarily put you in a certain category,” Uche said.
Jean-Paul Torres, a San Francisco resident and former University of Nevada, Reno student, also took a lot from what Lugo spoke of.
“There is a history that comes with bicycle advocacy that for me was very validating with my experience in Reno,” Torres said.
Urban planning professor Gordon Douglas said he helped to set up the presentation as part of his role as director for the Institute of Metropolitan Studies.
Douglas has a big role in organizing urban research and putting together working groups for department faculty and graduate students.
“I was really pleased that people came, we had people from [San Jose] City Hall and from all across campus and from all around,” Douglas said.
“I think it was really important that we started talking about all of the stuff Dr. Lugo was saying about mobility justice and how safe streets are more than just being safe from traffic,” Douglas said.
The motivations for those who came clearly range, however it was clear they believed in the goal of being involved in changing the concept of transportation.
“It showcases the interests of getting pedestrians involved in what is a more sustainable means for transportation,” Uche said.
