Peer-to-Peer Bicycle Networks

What’s the Latest Development?

Founder of the peer-to-peer Internet service LimeWire, Mark Gorton has a passion for peer-to-peer cities. Having invested in government transparency programs and crowd sourced urban planning, his next project is to radically reduce automobile use in cities. “Basically, the litmus test is this: If a policy makes it harder and more expensive to drive, chances are it’s a good policy. If it makes it easier to drive it is a bad policy.” About five years ago, Gorton started the N.Y.C. Streets Renaissance campaign which focuses on bus rapid transit, congestion pricing and bicycling. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Gordon’s vision of the future is clear. He wants automobiles out of cities as a mode of personal transport. “What I am trying to get people to understand is cars should be a disfavored technology. We should be consciously trying to minimize them and we should be making it harder—more expensive and more inconvenient—for people to drive. We should be rationing the ability for people to drive because it has so many negative social consequences. Most people don’t get that.”