When “local” won’t cut it

On some medieval maps, unexplored areas where marked with drawings of monsters with the cheeky warning, “Here be dragons”.  It was a way to denote unspecified dangers lurk outside of a known area.  Today, Google Maps doesn’t have dragons or sea creatures at the edge of the map.  Most of us would scoff at the idea that out there, somewhere, is a place with unknown monsters waiting for us.

But do we believe in a different type of dragon that might live outside our local area of comfort?  Maybe those dragons, they vote different than we do.  Maybe they worship different than us.  Maybe they enjoy a different type of work than we do.  Maybe they live in a part of the country we have preconceptions about.  Maybe those dragons don’t seem as sophisticated as us.

For many things, “local” should be default.  We want local schools.  We want to shop at local stores.  We want local produce.  We want local beer.  But “local” can become a way to isolate ourselves, to avoid in other words, the things we consider to be dragons.
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Believe it or not, this same belief in the dragons out there can affect how we make urban mountain biking happen.

​Wisdom isn’t avoidance

In some parts of the country urban mountain biking is just a normal part of having public lands with trails.   In other parts of the country, even the idea of urban mountain biking is scoffed at.  That means that for a certain part of the readers of CityMTB.org they might not have anyone with hands on knowledge and experience of urban mountain biking.  Even in locations with very active state-wide mountain biking clubs, urban mountain biking has been a challenge.
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What is needed to make urban mountain biking more uniform in its distribution in the United States is some information sharing.  How can a place like Kansas City have so much urban mountain biking and other cities    have so little?  The people in Kansas City aren’t better people, nor smarter.  But what is different is that after many years Kansas City has a knowledge base to build on.  If those citizens want to create a new mountain bike experience in a park, they have a generation’s worth of knowledge to apply.  Places without urban mountain biking trails have none of that.  But what would the city council of some of these cities say to the idea that they had much to learn from Kansas City?  Would the answer contain the word “local” as code for “better people”?  Would the answer be couched in terms of “differing geographies” as a dog whistle for “flyover country” or “rednecks”?

After this, she will go ride Swope Park. Also, she knows more about urban mountain biking than many city councils.

If we want to be wise in our pursuit of urban mountain biking, we would want to learn all we can, even from people who don’t agree with us.  That may mean listening to people from a place with very different circumstances and geography.  Those people may tell us things we don’t want to hear.

The most recent series of articles here on CityMTB was about sharing trails.  In the end, we discovered that the secret to sharing was highly sinuous trails without a lot of straightaways.  It’s likely some or all of those trails would be directional.  To do directional trails without issues, that means stacked loop trail layout.  Think about how weird that would be to someone living in Colorado, for instance.  There the trails tend to be long sections with long straightaways, often without directionality and certainly not in a stacked loop configuration.  Would there be the temptation to say, “Well that isn’t how we do it locally”?
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To do urban mountain biking right, we want to make the wisest choices we can.  That means not avoiding answers that others have to our questions.

​‘Experts’ isn’t a bad word

One of the odd things about urban mountain biking is the inverse curve of knowledge and consequences.  If you are in a city without any urban mountain biking, it’s likely your knowledge may be based on visiting a city with urban mountain biking or hearing about a city with urban mountain biking.  Beyond that, it’s sort of a nebulous proposition.  Where do you start?  What is the city’s process?  It’s also likely that those within the city’s parks department or city council know even less than you about how do this.

While there is a lack of knowledge, the consequences for making a mistake are enormous.  You could fail in the process in some way and set the entire idea back years, if not a decade or more.  If you get permission and you then create a situation with high impacts, either environmental or social, you could kill the idea of urban mountain biking in your city outright.

On top of this, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows with urban mountain biking.  There are, to put it bluntly, good ideas and bad ideas when it comes to putting trails on public land in a city.  What sounds like a good idea (alternating day use, for example) might be a problem solver in concept but is a nightmare in actual functionality.  Also, there may be special circumstances that you may not know about.  What happens if there are questions on how to have mountain biking in ultra-low impact sites?  There are some great examples of how to do that, but they may not be well known.

So, what to do?  Well, you need someone that knows more about the process and requirements of urban mountain biking than you.  That is, an expert.  And the fact is, they won’t be from your city.  They may not even be from your state.  They might be from, gasp!, flyover country.  But they know more about urban mountain biking than you.

Knobbies in the Neighborhood is the obvious answer here.  If it’s not the Knobbies in the Neighborhood presentation, please be sure the person or persons you find to help you has experience going through the process of creating urban mountain biking trails.  That means the entire process in an urban area, starting with contacting the city and ending with construction.  Also, look up the types of trails they have been involved with.  Are those trails controversy free?  Can they be shared without issue?  Do they understand user management techniques?

Regardless of who is the person or persons helping you, the fact is that at the end of the day, it’s going to require some humility to accept their recommendations.  It’s going to take some fortitude to fight for those recommendations to the city.  You will have to fight against those that say, “But they aren’t from around here.”
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If urban mountain biking is something you want in your city, it’s time to venture past your comfort zone into the area marked, “Here be dragons.”