PREVIEW: Ashik Jain, the Bicycle Mayor of One of India's Fastest Growing Cities

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Ashik Jain is an architect, planner and the Bicycle Mayor of Pimpri-Chinchwad, the fastest growing industrial city in India and one of the fastest growing cities in the country overall. With that growth has come a host of problems which are common to any rapidly developing region, including pollution and automobile congestion. Thankfully, the city is working on number of initiatives to help make life a little healthier and safer for the people who live there. One of those programs, named Harit Setu ("Green Bridge"), aims to deliver India's first 15-minute neighborhoods, with a complete network of bicycle lanes, continuous sidewalks, public seating, and—rather importantly in a part of the world feeling the effects of climate change quite acutely—green infrastructure and shade. Ashik's story offers lots of valuable lessons to all of us who do this work. Plus, as we discuss, bikelash may be the international language.

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