Worrying news is arriving from Germany, going against the grain of the idea we have of Northern Europe and its propensity for road change, which until now had been perceived under the Alps as a direction now taken for granted. This seems not to be the case. In an article that appeared in the Spiegel and imported here in Italy by the weekly Internazionale, entitled Green doesn’t like it, there are setbacks in the development of roads with spaces reassigned for cycling and therefore removed from cars.
These are experiences that are being lived in cities of the most varied size, from modest centers like Griessen to much larger and well-known cities such as Hanover, Munich and even the capital, Berlin.
The German case is however, in some way, partially opposite to what we are experiencing, where the fight against cycling comes directly from the central government: lately and more and more often, Spiegel writes, every time an administration proposes a project in favor of spaces dedicated to bicycles, opposing voices are raised and the dispute often reaches the courts. Something unexpected for us, perhaps thanks to our sugary vision of the European elsewhere.
The dynamics of the reaction, however, is identical to ours: the opposing voices have the same Italian reaction to attempts – unanimously supported by urban planners and administrations – at infrastructural and regulatory changes. If you can’t get to the shop by car, naturally with the usual limit of 50 km/h and not the 30 that is expanding in urban redesigns, the alarms on your personal freedom go off.
No reasoning that focuses on climate change or people’s safety seems to be effective in the face of this reaction, exactly as happens in Italy. In the land of Berlin the CDU (the German DC) even won the elections with a pro-personal car campaign, defeating the Greens who were naturally proceeding in the opposite direction.
One result is that the new government has reopened the central Friedrichstrasse to cars and imposed a stop on new cycle paths. Like our Matteo Salvini, in short, and even there those who want change are accused of ideological positions, whatever that means.
The question is: what is happening? The newspaper quotes a researcher, Karoline Augenstein, who began investigating this phenomenon. According to her, we have moved from a debate so far between specialists to its application on the road, inevitably involving the entire population and therefore entering a truly broad scope. The attack on freedoms is a fig leaf, and more profoundly the change collides with what Augenstein calls “the power of normality”.
In short, what doesn’t need to be explained is normal, the state of affairs in which you grew up is therefore normality, which must therefore be defended regardless of any reasoning.
The need for change instead requires reasoning, which is therefore abnormal.
