Positive Cycling Propaganda from Arlington Country (Virginia)

Typically the word "propaganda" is not given a positive spin - Wikipedia says, "While the term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples . . . propaganda in its original sense was neutral, and could refer to uses that were generally benign or innocuous . . . " and that "Propaganda is a form of communication aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda statements may be partly false and partly true. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes."



It seems pretty clear that Arlington County wants this new video it has produced to influence community attitudes towards cycling. Yes. The video is described here.

As Arlington's bicycle program, BikeArlington's mission is to get more Arlingtonians biking more often, whether they're commuting, shopping, or just having fun. We do this through encouragement as well as education, and what better way to educate our community on bicycling in Arlington than with a documentary on everything that we do to achieve that goal?

Overall the video is well done, although it is a little heavy on County employees (so called "County staff") as talking heads. In particular it would have been nice to have some graphics showing some of this growth in cycling they are talking about and perhaps a map. Also, as someone who lives in south Arlington I note that the outdoor shots are almost entirely from north Arlington (which is where the County admin types work and perhaps focus more of their attention?). One shot of south Arlington, along Four Mile Run (that is on my regular work commute by bike) at 4:58 through 5:05 and again 5:43 through 5:48 shows part of the trail that I know is in Alexandria, not Arlington, because of a recent question I sent to the Arlington bike coordinator about the zig-zag trail that is being installed there (and that is shown in the video). Oops.

Addendum 10/16 -- the mention of Crystal City and the video of streets scenes there, including aerial shots of Boeing's local HQ and the like is in south Arlington but I would suggest is quite different from the rest of it - also, it seems that Crystal City is mentioned since the big corporations gave $250,000 to start Capital Bikeshare there. (Which I didn't know. Interesting.) Anyway, the more I think it over, the more I am (slightly) annoyed that they couldn't do a little better to show more of the cycling infrastructure further than a few miles from their offices in north Arlington.

Addendum #2 10/16 -- at 8:30 the talking head person says that "the goal is [for Arlington] to become the best biking city on the east coast; the Country board set the goal for staff [i.e., the Country employees] . . . " - as a goal, I find this disappointing. Really, we are conceding leadership to Portland or Seattle or ??? What the heck. Why.