Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Policymaking is conceived and portrayed as the means to an end, resulting in sustained practical improvement to current conditions. As policy scholars know well, this ideal often does not pan out and policies fall short of promised outcomes. Policy failure is discussed in endless contexts, ranging from media to academic to colloquial. In neighborhoods shaped by policymaking challenges and failures, much remains to be learned from how local spatial and social dynamics are affected.

This paper addresses fundamental questions about policymaking through a study of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Here, the installation of a new bike lane on a main neighborhood thoroughfare provoked disparate responses from the local Hasidic Jewish community and a growing population of hipsters, thus transforming cultural, political, and spatial relationships. Divergent community values colored the responses of this conservative sect and young progressive group. After the installation of the bike lane on Bedford Avenue in early 2008, vehement opposition from the Hasidic community ultimately culminated in the removal of the bike lane in December 2009, with a cost both to city taxpayers and the harmony of the neighborhood.

Using an ethnographic approach, this study investigates an act of policymaking (installing the bike lane) and unmaking (removing the bike lane) in this rapidly changing neighborhood: the political factors at play, central stakeholders, portrayal by the media, and the effects on relationships between cultural communities.

The research examines how cultural groups interpret public spaces in their neighborhood. Brooklyn is home to the largest Hasidic population outside of Israel; the largest, densest numbers live in Williamsburg. Hipster is a contemporary label used in academic and popular culture to describe a subset of urban millennials. The hipster is the contemporary villain of gentrification in cities across the US and globally.

My research on the Bedford Avenue bike lane shows how this conflict follows the Hasidic community’s pattern of engaging in effective policy advocacy. It seems clear that policymakers, bike riders, and advocates, underestimated the Hasidic population’s political prowess and the larger symbolism of the bike lane as a manifestation of permanent spatial and territorial change. But the lasting ramifications of this kind of anti-change advocacy have yet to be determined, as tensions between these cultural groups are ongoing, and some riders continue to use Bedford Avenue as a bike route despite the absence of a bike lane.