This Art Project Slows Down Citi Bikes to Make NYC's Rent Crisis Feel Real
Artist Justin Blinder created an art-project gadget called Ground Truth that slows down Citi Bikes in rent-burdened neighborhoods to raise awareness about the housing affordability crisis in New York City.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Ground Truth is a device that attaches to a Citi Bike and adds resistance to the pedals when riding through areas with high rent insecurity. The goal is to make the city's economic disparities more tangible and embodied.
Imagine you're riding a bike through a city, and the bike gets harder to pedal when you pass through neighborhoods where people struggle to pay rent. That's what an artist created to raise awareness about the housing affordability crisis in New York City.
Analysis
The Birth of Ground Truth
Justin Blinder's experience of delivering food on his bicycle during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 sparked an idea for an art project that would raise awareness about the housing affordability crisis in New York City. He noticed the disparities in where the food items went and how much people tipped, which made the city feel economically and psychologically disparate. This experience has morphed into an art-project gadget called Ground Truth that Blinder hopes will make a Citi Bike harder to ride through places where it's harder to live.
How Ground Truth Works
Ground Truth is a box that will trigger the brakes on the Lyft-owned bicycle, adding more resistance to the pedals when riding through rent-burdened neighborhoods. The device is attached to the bike's fork and is then attached to the front brake line. A battery-powered GPS component tracks the bike's location and cross-references it with household economic data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey. When the bike passes a block the dataset says has a higher percentage of rent insecurity, the microcontroller triggers a small motor that applies the brake to add resistance, and the bike gets physically harder to pedal.
The Goal of Ground Truth
Blinder hopes the project will also call attention to the rising cost of renting a Citi Bike. The service has raised its prices for the past five years in a row. He says the device is not a working product or something other people will be able to use, but he has ridden about 35 miles or so, filming the experience as Ground Truth changes its resistance in different communities. He hopes the project will also make the city's economic disparities more tangible and embodied, and allow people to experience the affordability crisis on a block-by-block basis.
Key points
- Artist Justin Blinder created an art-project gadget called Ground Truth to raise awareness about the housing affordability crisis in New York City.
- Ground Truth slows down Citi Bikes in rent-burdened neighborhoods to make the city's economic disparities more tangible and embodied.
- The project aims to call attention to the rising cost of renting a Citi Bike and the need for affordable housing in the city.
- Blinder hopes the project will make the city's economic disparities more tangible and embodied, and allow people to experience the affordability crisis on a block-by-block basis.
If this art project raises awareness about the housing affordability crisis, it could lead to more people advocating for affordable housing and policy changes to address the issue.
However, the project may not have a significant impact if it is not widely publicized or if people do not engage with it. Additionally, the project's message may be lost on those who are not familiar with the issue of housing affordability.
