At the end of every month, bicyclists in over 200 cities
around the world gather for Critical Mass and ride through
rush-hour traffic like a swarm of bees. There are numerous
individual reasons for going on these rides, no official
platform for which the event stands, and no official organization
keeping it together. When passers-by witness the spectacle
of hundreds of cyclists jamming through a city street,
‘Massers’ hope these people will begin to consider
navigating the city on vehicles other than automobiles.
Since the first Daley Plaza Critical
Mass bike ride in 1997, Chicago’s Critical Mass (CCM)
has been facilitating a strong community of everyday cyclists.
The ride itself is a mobile party. There are occasionally
confrontations with drivers, but the regulars discourage
such behavior. Most participants describe an ideal city
with fewer cars and more people cycling. This ideal compliments
the City of Chicago’s efforts to reduce the number
of automobile trips in the city to lower congestion on city
streets. Bike cops are often seen participating amicably
in the mass. Occurring in a city with a bike friendly mayor
and relatively progressive cycling infrastructure for the
city’s large size, it is becoming safer for people
to ride on many Chicago streets. However, many recreational
cyclists still fear riding in traffic. A CCM ride
takes over city streets and creates safe space dominated
by bicycles for two hours a month. The ride empowers riders
and the cycling community that has emerged from the rides
creates a social network that enables many cyclists to start
realizing their ideal city through the practice of everyday,
human-powered transportation. 
Critical Mass is a social phenomenon that
spreads its ideas not only on the streets but also in cyberspace.
During the rides, human agency is taken back into the streets
where individuals control the city space by being in a mass
of other cyclists. A pro-bike message is disseminated across
the city on public streets. Multi-media facilitates the
compression of time and space, the sample of video
clips on this site along with the chosen maps illustrate
the expanse of city streets that have served as a stage
for Critical Mass.
This Web site is a multimedia ethnography based on research
conducted in 2001 and 2002 for my Master's in the Social
Sciences from the University of Chicago (Anderson 2003).
The combination of images, videos,
maps and artifacts from the ride with a critical analysis
of CCM as a social movement provides a rational and sensual
understanding of the power of the movement.
You can use this site to find out a bit
more on CCM: why people keep going on rides, watch a video
to hear and see what people experience in the mass, how
CCM impacts policy in Chicago... If you're interested in
social theory, you can also follow the hyperlinks to read
my analysis critical social
theory, postmodern geography
and multimedia forms of representation to illustrate the
social and virtual networks that CCM generates to promote
its politics of movement against the spatial hegemony of
capital. Here are my findings:
