NECESSITY
In Parable of the Sower, the protagonist Lauren travels by bike with her community in a context of fear and instability. When cars become too expensive and walking too dangerous, biking emerges as a practical means of survival. In this moment, biking functions both as utility and as a fragile form of hope within an apocalyptic landscape.
"We rode our bikes to [the church] this morning...All the adults were armed. That's the rule. Go out in a bunch, and go armed...To the adults, going outside to a real church was like stepping back into the good old days when there were churches all over the place and too many lights and gasoline was for fueling cars and trucks instead of for torching things...To us kids..the trip was just an adventure, an excuse to go outside the wall."
-Butler, "Parable of the Sower," page 8
HOPE:
A recent example can be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. As public transportation systems shut down and enclosed spaces became sites of risk, many people quite literally “biked through the apocalypse.” Biking became more than transportation—it was also recreation, exercise, and a way to safely connect with others outdoors.
In cities like Montreal, existing bike culture combined with new infrastructure developments helped support this shift. Expanded bike lanes and reduced car traffic enabled both recreational and utilitarian cycling to grow during the crisis. In this context, biking acted as a form of resilience, demonstrating how moments of disruption can open up alternative ways of living and moving (Piatkowski, 32).
Rather than representing only loss, apocalyptic moments can create opportunities for transformation. As some scholars suggest, alternative lifestyles need not be defined solely by scarcity or despair—they can also produce new forms of connection, movement, and possibility.
“The circumstances of the pandemic made space…for urban experimentation, collaboration, and capacity building in cities”
- Piatkowski, 32.
Valenzuela's article exemplifies how the COVID pandemic opened up many bike lanes and plans that had been in the process of becoming. Montreal is North America's top ranked bike city, which affirms that it has a strong bike culture. This societal aspect, the closer (and fear) of public transport, the city closing roads to cars and opening up more pop-up bike lanes, all lead to Montrealers "biking through the pandemic" where recreational and utilitarian biking persisted in the face of a global health crisis. In this way, Montreal's bike infrastructure proved to be a critical alternative for commuters (Valenzuela).
