Melissa & Chris Bruntlett on City Planning

Ben Durham (interviewed & edited) and Jack Spence (lead the entire project!) from London Cycle Link (here in London, Ontario, Canada) sat down with Melissa & Chris Bruntlett over a 50-minute Zoom call and asked them around 10 questions. This is the "full-length" interview, minus the preamble and unimportant bits.

Melissa & Chris Bruntlett are authors and urban mobility advocates who strive to communicate the benefits of sustainable transport and inspire happier, healthier, more human-scale cities.

Find Melissa & Chris here: http://www.modacitylife.com/

___________________

Here are the questions Jack came up with to get these responses from Melissa and Chris:

1. What are the important ingredients you have seen in cities that are making good changes for cyclists?
2. How do you win over car-centric residents into believing that cycling is a viable transportation option (even for others)?
3. Would you focus on more infrastructure that works for the people who already cycle, or on better infrastructure that helps those who don’t cycle yet.
4. What do you think should be the most important goals of a cycling advocacy group in a city like ours?
5. Some people swear by quantifiable data, and some really value the power of a story. Where do you land on this? What have you seen as being successful to change minds?
6. Our city has been making piecemeal improvements scattered around the city as part of larger infrastructure projects, but there’s really no connected grid. How would you convince the city to go in on a trial grid like what was done in Calgary?
7. What is the mindset we should be in as advocates to help us succeed and persist?
8. What are things that make you hopeful about positive change for North American cities?
9. How do we get our city to engage with Modacity or Mobycon, or the Dutch Cycling Embassy?
10. Any other advice you’d give to cycling advocates in London?