Sociology researcher at Manchester Metropolitan University. Interested in futures, post-automobility, utopias and post-growth societies. Address: Manchester
This research investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through which th... more This research investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through which the bicycle could reconfigure urban mobilities and catalyse change towards slow living. Drawing upon readings in mobility and utopian studies, the thesis considers three complementary aspects that could be decisive in the transition towards a 'slow bicycle system'. I investigate first the potential of embodied and sociable practices of cycling to prefigure mobility futures that successfully challenge the 'car system'. Using (auto)ethnographic and mobile methods to document my own cycling, as well as that of various groups in London and Amsterdam, I unveil a cycling subjectivity informed by richly engaged immersions and interactions with the natural and social worlds. Their slowness challenges the dominant mechanical rhythms of automobility and the utilitarian space of the road. I consequently and secondly propose a critique of the current configuration and anticipated traje...
In less than a decade, with the emergence of food delivery platforms, cycling has gained increase... more In less than a decade, with the emergence of food delivery platforms, cycling has gained increased visibility on city roads across the world. For the first time since the advent of the automobile age, the bicycle is re-emerging globally as a dependable tool to earn a living. Food delivery start-ups such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats or Glovo enroll an increasingly precarious population as self-employed contractors to whom they grant little social protection. Having access to a bicycle and knowing how to use it is a very low entrance requirement for these jobs. Cycle food couriers hold a precarious entitlement to the road space, which makes them constantly vulnerable to bodily harm, and is compounded by a broader ontological precarity. The insecurity resulting from being engaged in an unregulated gig economy where job and income instability is amplified by issues of gender, ethnicity and migration status, further adds to road unsafety. In this chapter, we draw on case studies from the UK, ...
This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around th... more This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around the world, aimed at refocusing car-based transport and urban planning towards sustainable transport and as a strategy to create more liveable places. The initiatives were analyzed and classified in terms of their rationale or objective, scale and level of implementation. Six key underlying objectives were identified for the initiatives: i) reduce car use attractiveness by making it more inconvenient and costly, ii) increase the attractiveness of sustainable modes and integrated transport systems by making them more convenient, iii) revive social functionality of streets, iv) reduce environmental impacts of transport, v) promote sustainable housing developments and vi) rationalize freight operation. This research illustrates how transport supply is strongly shaped by policies and how transport demand is driven by people’s aspirations but also as a response to the context set by the provided transport supply. The analyzed initiatives highlight the need for multidimensional sustainable transport strategies to overcome car-dependency and to achieve wider sustainability goals. The research underscores the role that technology has in enabling both changes in supply through new types of mobility, but also changes in demand, especially as a platform for social movements to organize and create the critical mass that enables cultural shift. The studied initiatives make evident that in the context of a technology-intensive future mobility, aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
The aim of this paper is to explore track cycling through visual and aural sensory modalities. We... more The aim of this paper is to explore track cycling through visual and aural sensory modalities. We draw on Pink’s work on emplacement and of the researcher serving an apprenticeship by engaging through first-hand experience and learning track practices and routines in which we reflected on our visual and aural senses to account for understanding the body and the transformations it undergoes when riding track. This speaks to Hockey and Allen-Collinson’s call for a ‘fleshy perspective’ by reintroducing the body into sporting practice. Undertaking an auto-ethnographic method, we use diarised notes drawn from six track cycling sessions to account for sensory experiences by reflecting on aural and visual senses in the context of the skills we acquired during track sessions. In this, the emergent narrative situates the body as a place of contestation and transition, whereby our visual and aural modalities are the senses by which we narrate our improving aptitude, and attained physical capi...
ABSTRACT Increasing concerns regarding congestion, pollution and health have warranted a renewed ... more ABSTRACT Increasing concerns regarding congestion, pollution and health have warranted a renewed interest in cycling as alternative mobility. Yet, in revising the role of the bicycle as legitimate transportation, policy documents and academic literature have paid less attention to how cycling is different from the sensory engagement through the car, public transport, or walking. This article uses sensuous and video ethnographies of cycling in London and Lancaster (UK) to present cycling as a distinctly embodied practice. By investigating the cycling senses and how its technologies and materialities shape the mobile experience, the article contributes to the critiques of urban movement narrowly understood as utilitarian and instrumental. At a time when transition to low-carbon transport systems is critical and when automated driving futures appear imminent, this article argues for the pervasive centrality of the body in everyday urban mobilities.
This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around th... more This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around the world, aimed at refocusing car-based transport and urban planning towards sustainable transport and as a strategy to create more liveable places. The initiatives were analyzed and classified in terms of their rationale or objective, scale and level of implementation. Six key underlying objectives were identified for the initiatives: i) reduce car use attractiveness by making it more inconvenient and costly, ii) increase the attractiveness of sustainable modes and integrated transport systems by making them more convenient, iii) revive social functionality of streets, iv) reduce environmental impacts of transport, v) promote sustainable housing developments and vi) rationalize freight operation. This research illustrates how transport supply is strongly shaped by policies and how transport demand is driven by people’s aspirations but also as a response to the context set by the provided transport supply. The analyzed initiatives highlight the need for multidimensional sustainable transport strategies to overcome car-dependency and to achieve wider sustainability goals. The research underscores the role that technology has in enabling both changes in supply through new types of mobility, but also changes in demand, especially as a platform for social movements to organize and create the critical mass that enables cultural shift. The studied initiatives make evident that in the context of a technology-intensive future mobility, aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
Visual perception is of uttermost importance for cyclists orienting themselves in urban environme... more Visual perception is of uttermost importance for cyclists orienting themselves in urban environments, wherein the imperatives of 'See!' (and 'Be seen!') can make a dramatic difference between a safe ride and an unfortunate traffic event. Drawing from the work of J.J. Gibson (1938) in the domain of ecological psychology, in this paper I delineate the characteristics of the 'visual field of safe travel' in relation to cycling. In doing so, I also expand Gibson's overtly visual (and car-focused) account by bringing to the fore a plethora of other senses that make cycling a distinctive mobility practice. Arguing that senses not only function as mere sensations and feelings, but as effective ways of 'making sense' of the world (Rodaway 1994), I show how cycling sensory scapes are substantially different from those afforded by the car, where indeed one is often completely 'car-cooned' not only from risks and dangers, as Urry and Kingsley (2009) argue, but from a more rich and meaningful perception of the environment. The sensory scape surrounding the bicycle rider opens up her body not only to a more unmediated perception of the environment itself, but it makes possible the very articulation of political and cultural discourses about liberation, counter-culture, alternative and green(er) lifestyles or post-capitalist societies. This presentation draws from an auto-ethnography of my cycling experience in London, which is documented with a mixture of mobile methods (Büscher and Urry 2009), featuring video and audio recordings.
The increasing use of mobile technologies in both the practice and the academic research of cycli... more The increasing use of mobile technologies in both the practice and the academic research of cycling has opened up new venues for how cycling is both performed and reflected upon as a distinctive gearing to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1958) of the velomobile subject. Particularly essential in advancing an understanding of mobilities as meaningful practices (Cresswell 2006), which go beyond the push and pull forces at the start and destination points usually reflected in most transportation studies, mobile methods are effectively reassessing the centrality of the moving body as site of investigation. Within my doctoral research which investigates the possibilities of a bicycle socio-technical system within a post-growth future I have developed a methodological toolbox that uses utopian imaginary (Levitas 2005) to envision the functioning of mobile societies freed from the confinements of the automobility system (Urry 2004). Amongst others, I use mobile methods such as 'ride alongs' (Spinney 2006), audio and video footage (Jones 2012, Spinney 2009, McIlvenny 2013) to investigate how cyclists' senses and sociabilities could be re-articulated within this utopian enterprise.
While mobile methods are often well suited to elicit the fleeting, the distributed, the multiple, the sensory, the emotional and the kinaesthetic of complex social realities (Law and Urry 2011), their effectiveness in radically re-imagining mobility systems remains sometimes limited. More speculative techniques of research are thus added to the toolbox. For the study of utopian cycling sensescapes, for instance, mobile methods are reinforced through a more self-reflexive approach to how my own sensory tactics as a cyclist are developed through a lengthy process, which becomes visible when auto-ethnographic and auto-biographical accounts are drawn into use. Similarly, the video methods used to study the fragile sociabilities of everyday cycling in the UK are strengthened through supplementary approaches such as the investigation of historical data describing the golden age of mass cycling as well as study trips to countries with more established cycling cultures.
In this presentation I argue that the sensescapes of cycling are an essential aspect upon which a... more In this presentation I argue that the sensescapes of cycling are an essential aspect upon which a future bicycle system can build its mass appeal in the broader quest to reverse the hegemony exerted today by the system of automobility (Urry 2004). The highly embodied perception of the urban environment that cycling affords to its practitioners is generative of an experience of being-in-the-world through movement (Merleau-Ponty 1958) which is more enhancing of the human beingness than that of moving within the cocooned and numbing space of the motorcar. Drawing from auto-ethnographic accounts of my cycling in variously more or less car-dominated urban environments in Central London and Lancaster, UK, as well as from biographical data of my own cycling enskilment, I reflect on the contested nature of the slow and sometimes painful development of sensory tolerances.
Looking, hearing, the acute sensations of pain, the tiresome ones of feeling too cold or too hot, or even the imperceptible ones of equilibrium constantly come to the fore to articulate my own cycling sensescapes. Yet, they cannot be easily separated from one another, this 'being-in-the-world' requires actually that the whole body is engaged in perception, rather than just a series of individual senses. Latent senses, long-forgotten in the comfortable space of the automobile, come to life, disobedient as they are, once I mount the bike saddle. Building sensory tolerances to deal with such indisciplined stimuli is part and parcel of an appreciation of human flourishing that is radically different from the prevalent contemporary ideas of excessive bodily comfort.
Consider pain, for example, in this auto-ethnographic account of my cycling in London:
Now my left foot is on the kerb, yellow and now green, here I start again [Roaring cars around]. A cyclist in front of me, I'll overtake him probably, raising from the saddle now, two strong pedal strokes, a brief twinge in the calf muscles [Roaring cars], I'm still behind the lazy cyclist, green light ahead. We both pass by a girl on a Boris bike who's pretty slow. And another one who signals a left turn. I stay on the first lane, stopping at the red light again, brakes, foot on the … not on the ground as it turns yellow and green, and I overtake, I overtake the lazy cyclist in front of me. I raise again from the saddle, pedal fast now so others won't catch me. I can still feel the back pain I have from an older accident, it's not very acute though. I can feel the sweat now on my chest, beads of sweat dripping down the abdomen. (Field notes from 2 bicycle rides in London, on 19 January 2015 and 6 March 2015)
Some bursts of mild pain are unavoidable in everyday cycling, resulting in physical side effects, ranging from heating the body, to sweating, to accelerated heartbeats and breathing, to increased amount of saliva in the mouth. Nevertheless, in modernity pain has been institutionalised and turned into a domain of expertise belonging almost exclusively to medicine, generating a cultural fear of pain (Cook 2000).
An alternative perspective, one that reframes the meaning of pain, may be proposed instead: living with pain as part of one's becoming, learning its rules and warnings, even indulging in it are possible and they require an utopian ontology which questions both the nature and the culture of pain. Slowing down becomes then an effort, an accomplishment; slow-as-affect appears visible 'in the form of mobility practices and experiences that directly show the physical work, the struggle, and the fatigue of the movement' (Vannini 2013:122). Enduring the pain as one cycles, as well as recovering from the sometimes mild, sometimes severe, pain of cycling involves a particular form of slowing down, one which rejects notions of instant gratification. A distinctive form of well-being is produced, one which is not likely to be hedonic, but eudaimonic.
Developing sensory tolerances as one cycles can be interpreted as a particular normative idea of what constitutes human flourishing. Getting used to the wind blown in the face, mastering the fleeting sense of equilibrium on a bike or, as I have just shown, domesticating the bursts of pain in the legs are not only reminders that one's body is alive. They also redefine what flourishing represents for humans, both in relation to their physical being in the world and to the social interactions they engage in during mundane urban mobilities.
By investigating the sensescapes of cycling and the slow articulation of sensory tolerances I propose the use of utopianism as a method (Levitas 2013) to imagine better societies where cycling is no longer marginal. In its ontological mode, speaking at the level of individual experience, utopia as method goes beyond simply asking how might the social institutions look like in a post-car future. It aims as well to show that humans have themselves the capacity to redefine the nature of their everyday mobilities. Away from fast, utilitarian and growth oriented transportation, and towards slower, more simple and more convivial forms of mobilities.
Historically, cycling has nurtured a multitude of competing, sometimes even conflicting, visions ... more Historically, cycling has nurtured a multitude of competing, sometimes even conflicting, visions about what represents the 'good society'. Indeed, the bicycle is 'a complex socio-technical object whose meanings and uses are shaped variously through its histories, production and uses' (Vivanco 2013: 26). As such, the bicycle utopias meant different things to different people at different times in history.
In late 1800s, cycling was mainly a bourgeois pastime, while the bicycle was associated with aspirations of modernity and progress (Furness 2010; Reid 2015). Conversely, the first half of the last century has witnessed a democratisation of the practice, particularly driven by feminist and socialist dreams, while in the second half environmentalist and anarchist movements kept the hopes of cycling futures alive (Horton 2006). Today, cycling is inspiring visions of sustainability, urban regeneration and getting economies back on track.
Drawing on research of contemporary cultural representations of cycling from literature, graphic novels and other artistic experimentations, as well as from policy documents such as cycling plans from London and from across Europe, this paper aims to unpack the form, content and function of current bicycle utopias (Levitas 2013). In doing so, I argue that aspirations of truly 'sharing cities' can only be achieved once the utopian promises of fast and seamless mobilities, as well as their associated hopes of unfettered economic growth, are challenged upfront.
The argument of this presentation is that cycling creates meaning through the act of moving toget... more The argument of this presentation is that cycling creates meaning through the act of moving together in time. Such instances of cycling together, that are so salient outside the city, for leisure or for sport, are almost invisible in cities. This paper examines why is this happening and how can this situation be addressed. Ultimately, my purpose is to assess how cycling together outside the city can contribute to the success of urban cycling practices.
I am addressing here the togetherness of cycling, a topic which is largely neglected by most of social scientists. Being mobile together is imbued with meaning, as 'moving in accordance brings about senses and feelings of solidarity and belonging without verbal, communicative and symbolic forms of action' (Adey 2010: 168).
Cycling is often described in academic literature with tropes suggesting different degrees of togetherness or, at least, communal ideals, such as citizenship (Aldred 2010), shared identity (Carlsson 2002), even revolution (Mapes 2009). Despite such associations, most of the academic literature on cycling is nevertheless focused on solidarity practices. The flâneur-cyclist (Oddy 2007, Cox 2008) has become the representative image of the lone cyclist practising an individualized 'tourist gaze' (Urry 2007) in the countryside, thus possibly reflecting cycling's marginalised status in academia. In contrast to these solitary approaches, I propose a focus on more solidary forms of cycling, the practices of cycling together, and on the subsequent construction of meaning by those who take part in them.
The process of meaning making while moving from A to B has been of uttermost importance for different social scientists working in the realm of mobilities studies. For them, it is important to move beyond the general perception of mobility as being unproductive and wasted time (as often reflected in the thinking of planners and engineers), claiming instead that mobility is itself a site of meaning creation, identity formation and even cultural production (Adey 2010; Creswell 2006; Ingold 2011).
Motion and emotion are, as Mimi Sheller puts it, 'kinaesthetically intertwined and produced together through a conjunction of bodies, technologies, and cultural practices' (Sheller 2004: 227). The geographer Tim Cresswell (2006) observes as well that mobility is far from being a chaotic thing and that meaning described on the move is seldom neglected: Stories about mobility, stories that are frequently ideological, connect blood cells to street patterns, reproduction to space travel. Movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning and it is this meaning that jumps scales. It is this issue of meaning that remains absent from accounts of mobility in general, and because it remains absent, important connections are not made (2006: 6-7).
In the cases of co-mobility, such emotions and affects 'rise and surge between bodies', says the geographer Peter Adey (2010: 166). That is to say that the emotions become themselves mobile as a result of not moving in time, but, as Adey explains, 'by simply moving with it' (2010:168): Bodies extend out into more-than-personal bonds and associations as people move with each other. Emotions and affects feed back as they leap between people tying them even closer together. […] Rather than communicating symbolically or discursively, being mobile together in time is 'crucial in both establishing and enhancing a sense of collective purpose and a common understanding' producing feelings of 'well being' (Brennan in Adey 2010: 167-8). The importance of togetherness in the studies of mobility is also echoed by John Urry (2007) who emphasizes 'the essential role of meetings for work, family and social life' in general (2007: 273).
In conclusion, this research into the practice of cycling together is concerned with the production and mobilisation of meaning within cyclists. The individualized and flâneuristic performance of cycling is only one part of the equation in question; cycling is, in the words of anthropologist Luis Vivanco, 'also a collective, expressive, and culturally patterned experience, in the sense that it is organized and constrained by social and political-economic processes, symbolic meanings, and actual skills, practices, and norms involved in riding a bicycle [through a city], each of which transcends what any single individual does or believes' (2013: 95).
Bibliography
Adey, P. (2010) Mobility, New York: Routledge;
Carlsson, C. (2002) Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Edinburgh: AK Press;
Cox, P. (2008) 'Voyeur, Flâneur or Kinaesthete? Cyclotourism and the production of experience', paper presented at the conference Cultural Production and Experience: Strategies, Design and Everyday Life, University of Roskilde, November 13-14;
Cresswell, T. (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Routledge;
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge;
Mapes, J. (2009) Pedaling Revolution. How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities, Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press;
Oddy, N. (2007) 'The Flaneur on Wheels?' in Horton, D; Rosen, P. and Cox, P. (eds.) Cycling and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate;
Sheller, M. (2004) 'Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car' in Featherstone M. et al. (2005) Automobilities, London: Sage;
Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press;
Custom bicycle constructors are able to engage others in emphasizing their cultural capital. In B... more Custom bicycle constructors are able to engage others in emphasizing their cultural capital. In Bucharest they are “untold kings” of a growing online community. Under a gentrified approach on urban cycling, I argue that solid bicycle infrastructures can be achieved by converting these online communities into offline critical mass.
“The number of bicyclists in our city is under 1%. We don't have the bicycle culture in Germany, Austria or Belgium”. This statement by a representative of the Street Administration Department of Bucharest is the main reason authorities aren't investing any money in building cycle lanes. “For now, the priority in Bucharest are the drivers”, Carmen Dinca added this last August. Most of the bicycle lanes in our capital (122 km) have been disbanded this year due to poor design and mis-placement on the sidewalk.
Despite statements by authorities, Bucharest is a burgeoning scene for bicycle culture. More and more people are using bicycles, not only for leisure or shopping, but also for daily commuting. I have carried out an ethnographic research in the midst of a community of custom bicycle constructors in Bucharest, that concluded last year with a master's thesis in anthropology. I argued that those bicycle builders are not mere trend-setters among gentrified bicyclists, but they can also muster cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973) likely to cause changes in urban mobility policies.
Top-down initiatives to building bicycle infrastructure in Bucharest have failed for now. The municipality has spent over 10 million euros for bicycle lanes, soon after taken down for being inadequate. In contrast, several bottom-up initiatives are creating human infrastructure that compensate the physical one (Lugo, 2012): NGOs suing authorities, critical mass actions, internet platforms, community events, illegal alley cat races etc.
PortocalaMecanica.ro (The Clockwork Orange) is an internet platform I launched in March 2009 with the scope of promoting the bicycle culture. It is one of the first media to address the needs of urban cyclists in Romania and it soon was followed by others. We organize several events for the community (flea markets, repair workshops, expositions, bike lessons). Portocala Mecanica has helped bicycling becoming not only more and more visible, but also more and more part of the public agenda.
On the 27th of October 2012, Bucharest hosted a protest in favor of bike lanes, gathering more than 1.000 participants. It was considered the biggest bicyclist gathering in history in Bucharest. Still, the number isn't enough to beat that ominous 1%. We are certainly more that that. Portocala Mecanica's latest ambition was to create a national online census to get a fairer picture of our ever-growing community. In February 2013 we launched www.catibiciclistisuntem.ro that will be available for completion until the end of March.
This research investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through which th... more This research investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through which the bicycle could reconfigure urban mobilities and catalyse change towards slow living. Drawing upon readings in mobility and utopian studies, the thesis considers three complementary aspects that could be decisive in the transition towards a 'slow bicycle system'. I investigate first the potential of embodied and sociable practices of cycling to prefigure mobility futures that successfully challenge the 'car system'. Using (auto)ethnographic and mobile methods to document my own cycling, as well as that of various groups in London and Amsterdam, I unveil a cycling subjectivity informed by richly engaged immersions and interactions with the natural and social worlds. Their slowness challenges the dominant mechanical rhythms of automobility and the utilitarian space of the road. I consequently and secondly propose a critique of the current configuration and anticipated traje...
In less than a decade, with the emergence of food delivery platforms, cycling has gained increase... more In less than a decade, with the emergence of food delivery platforms, cycling has gained increased visibility on city roads across the world. For the first time since the advent of the automobile age, the bicycle is re-emerging globally as a dependable tool to earn a living. Food delivery start-ups such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats or Glovo enroll an increasingly precarious population as self-employed contractors to whom they grant little social protection. Having access to a bicycle and knowing how to use it is a very low entrance requirement for these jobs. Cycle food couriers hold a precarious entitlement to the road space, which makes them constantly vulnerable to bodily harm, and is compounded by a broader ontological precarity. The insecurity resulting from being engaged in an unregulated gig economy where job and income instability is amplified by issues of gender, ethnicity and migration status, further adds to road unsafety. In this chapter, we draw on case studies from the UK, ...
This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around th... more This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around the world, aimed at refocusing car-based transport and urban planning towards sustainable transport and as a strategy to create more liveable places. The initiatives were analyzed and classified in terms of their rationale or objective, scale and level of implementation. Six key underlying objectives were identified for the initiatives: i) reduce car use attractiveness by making it more inconvenient and costly, ii) increase the attractiveness of sustainable modes and integrated transport systems by making them more convenient, iii) revive social functionality of streets, iv) reduce environmental impacts of transport, v) promote sustainable housing developments and vi) rationalize freight operation. This research illustrates how transport supply is strongly shaped by policies and how transport demand is driven by people’s aspirations but also as a response to the context set by the provided transport supply. The analyzed initiatives highlight the need for multidimensional sustainable transport strategies to overcome car-dependency and to achieve wider sustainability goals. The research underscores the role that technology has in enabling both changes in supply through new types of mobility, but also changes in demand, especially as a platform for social movements to organize and create the critical mass that enables cultural shift. The studied initiatives make evident that in the context of a technology-intensive future mobility, aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
The aim of this paper is to explore track cycling through visual and aural sensory modalities. We... more The aim of this paper is to explore track cycling through visual and aural sensory modalities. We draw on Pink’s work on emplacement and of the researcher serving an apprenticeship by engaging through first-hand experience and learning track practices and routines in which we reflected on our visual and aural senses to account for understanding the body and the transformations it undergoes when riding track. This speaks to Hockey and Allen-Collinson’s call for a ‘fleshy perspective’ by reintroducing the body into sporting practice. Undertaking an auto-ethnographic method, we use diarised notes drawn from six track cycling sessions to account for sensory experiences by reflecting on aural and visual senses in the context of the skills we acquired during track sessions. In this, the emergent narrative situates the body as a place of contestation and transition, whereby our visual and aural modalities are the senses by which we narrate our improving aptitude, and attained physical capi...
ABSTRACT Increasing concerns regarding congestion, pollution and health have warranted a renewed ... more ABSTRACT Increasing concerns regarding congestion, pollution and health have warranted a renewed interest in cycling as alternative mobility. Yet, in revising the role of the bicycle as legitimate transportation, policy documents and academic literature have paid less attention to how cycling is different from the sensory engagement through the car, public transport, or walking. This article uses sensuous and video ethnographies of cycling in London and Lancaster (UK) to present cycling as a distinctly embodied practice. By investigating the cycling senses and how its technologies and materialities shape the mobile experience, the article contributes to the critiques of urban movement narrowly understood as utilitarian and instrumental. At a time when transition to low-carbon transport systems is critical and when automated driving futures appear imminent, this article argues for the pervasive centrality of the body in everyday urban mobilities.
This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around th... more This paper analyses more than 200 ‘car-free’ city initiatives, from 95 different cities around the world, aimed at refocusing car-based transport and urban planning towards sustainable transport and as a strategy to create more liveable places. The initiatives were analyzed and classified in terms of their rationale or objective, scale and level of implementation. Six key underlying objectives were identified for the initiatives: i) reduce car use attractiveness by making it more inconvenient and costly, ii) increase the attractiveness of sustainable modes and integrated transport systems by making them more convenient, iii) revive social functionality of streets, iv) reduce environmental impacts of transport, v) promote sustainable housing developments and vi) rationalize freight operation. This research illustrates how transport supply is strongly shaped by policies and how transport demand is driven by people’s aspirations but also as a response to the context set by the provided transport supply. The analyzed initiatives highlight the need for multidimensional sustainable transport strategies to overcome car-dependency and to achieve wider sustainability goals. The research underscores the role that technology has in enabling both changes in supply through new types of mobility, but also changes in demand, especially as a platform for social movements to organize and create the critical mass that enables cultural shift. The studied initiatives make evident that in the context of a technology-intensive future mobility, aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
Visual perception is of uttermost importance for cyclists orienting themselves in urban environme... more Visual perception is of uttermost importance for cyclists orienting themselves in urban environments, wherein the imperatives of 'See!' (and 'Be seen!') can make a dramatic difference between a safe ride and an unfortunate traffic event. Drawing from the work of J.J. Gibson (1938) in the domain of ecological psychology, in this paper I delineate the characteristics of the 'visual field of safe travel' in relation to cycling. In doing so, I also expand Gibson's overtly visual (and car-focused) account by bringing to the fore a plethora of other senses that make cycling a distinctive mobility practice. Arguing that senses not only function as mere sensations and feelings, but as effective ways of 'making sense' of the world (Rodaway 1994), I show how cycling sensory scapes are substantially different from those afforded by the car, where indeed one is often completely 'car-cooned' not only from risks and dangers, as Urry and Kingsley (2009) argue, but from a more rich and meaningful perception of the environment. The sensory scape surrounding the bicycle rider opens up her body not only to a more unmediated perception of the environment itself, but it makes possible the very articulation of political and cultural discourses about liberation, counter-culture, alternative and green(er) lifestyles or post-capitalist societies. This presentation draws from an auto-ethnography of my cycling experience in London, which is documented with a mixture of mobile methods (Büscher and Urry 2009), featuring video and audio recordings.
The increasing use of mobile technologies in both the practice and the academic research of cycli... more The increasing use of mobile technologies in both the practice and the academic research of cycling has opened up new venues for how cycling is both performed and reflected upon as a distinctive gearing to the world (Merleau-Ponty 1958) of the velomobile subject. Particularly essential in advancing an understanding of mobilities as meaningful practices (Cresswell 2006), which go beyond the push and pull forces at the start and destination points usually reflected in most transportation studies, mobile methods are effectively reassessing the centrality of the moving body as site of investigation. Within my doctoral research which investigates the possibilities of a bicycle socio-technical system within a post-growth future I have developed a methodological toolbox that uses utopian imaginary (Levitas 2005) to envision the functioning of mobile societies freed from the confinements of the automobility system (Urry 2004). Amongst others, I use mobile methods such as 'ride alongs' (Spinney 2006), audio and video footage (Jones 2012, Spinney 2009, McIlvenny 2013) to investigate how cyclists' senses and sociabilities could be re-articulated within this utopian enterprise.
While mobile methods are often well suited to elicit the fleeting, the distributed, the multiple, the sensory, the emotional and the kinaesthetic of complex social realities (Law and Urry 2011), their effectiveness in radically re-imagining mobility systems remains sometimes limited. More speculative techniques of research are thus added to the toolbox. For the study of utopian cycling sensescapes, for instance, mobile methods are reinforced through a more self-reflexive approach to how my own sensory tactics as a cyclist are developed through a lengthy process, which becomes visible when auto-ethnographic and auto-biographical accounts are drawn into use. Similarly, the video methods used to study the fragile sociabilities of everyday cycling in the UK are strengthened through supplementary approaches such as the investigation of historical data describing the golden age of mass cycling as well as study trips to countries with more established cycling cultures.
In this presentation I argue that the sensescapes of cycling are an essential aspect upon which a... more In this presentation I argue that the sensescapes of cycling are an essential aspect upon which a future bicycle system can build its mass appeal in the broader quest to reverse the hegemony exerted today by the system of automobility (Urry 2004). The highly embodied perception of the urban environment that cycling affords to its practitioners is generative of an experience of being-in-the-world through movement (Merleau-Ponty 1958) which is more enhancing of the human beingness than that of moving within the cocooned and numbing space of the motorcar. Drawing from auto-ethnographic accounts of my cycling in variously more or less car-dominated urban environments in Central London and Lancaster, UK, as well as from biographical data of my own cycling enskilment, I reflect on the contested nature of the slow and sometimes painful development of sensory tolerances.
Looking, hearing, the acute sensations of pain, the tiresome ones of feeling too cold or too hot, or even the imperceptible ones of equilibrium constantly come to the fore to articulate my own cycling sensescapes. Yet, they cannot be easily separated from one another, this 'being-in-the-world' requires actually that the whole body is engaged in perception, rather than just a series of individual senses. Latent senses, long-forgotten in the comfortable space of the automobile, come to life, disobedient as they are, once I mount the bike saddle. Building sensory tolerances to deal with such indisciplined stimuli is part and parcel of an appreciation of human flourishing that is radically different from the prevalent contemporary ideas of excessive bodily comfort.
Consider pain, for example, in this auto-ethnographic account of my cycling in London:
Now my left foot is on the kerb, yellow and now green, here I start again [Roaring cars around]. A cyclist in front of me, I'll overtake him probably, raising from the saddle now, two strong pedal strokes, a brief twinge in the calf muscles [Roaring cars], I'm still behind the lazy cyclist, green light ahead. We both pass by a girl on a Boris bike who's pretty slow. And another one who signals a left turn. I stay on the first lane, stopping at the red light again, brakes, foot on the … not on the ground as it turns yellow and green, and I overtake, I overtake the lazy cyclist in front of me. I raise again from the saddle, pedal fast now so others won't catch me. I can still feel the back pain I have from an older accident, it's not very acute though. I can feel the sweat now on my chest, beads of sweat dripping down the abdomen. (Field notes from 2 bicycle rides in London, on 19 January 2015 and 6 March 2015)
Some bursts of mild pain are unavoidable in everyday cycling, resulting in physical side effects, ranging from heating the body, to sweating, to accelerated heartbeats and breathing, to increased amount of saliva in the mouth. Nevertheless, in modernity pain has been institutionalised and turned into a domain of expertise belonging almost exclusively to medicine, generating a cultural fear of pain (Cook 2000).
An alternative perspective, one that reframes the meaning of pain, may be proposed instead: living with pain as part of one's becoming, learning its rules and warnings, even indulging in it are possible and they require an utopian ontology which questions both the nature and the culture of pain. Slowing down becomes then an effort, an accomplishment; slow-as-affect appears visible 'in the form of mobility practices and experiences that directly show the physical work, the struggle, and the fatigue of the movement' (Vannini 2013:122). Enduring the pain as one cycles, as well as recovering from the sometimes mild, sometimes severe, pain of cycling involves a particular form of slowing down, one which rejects notions of instant gratification. A distinctive form of well-being is produced, one which is not likely to be hedonic, but eudaimonic.
Developing sensory tolerances as one cycles can be interpreted as a particular normative idea of what constitutes human flourishing. Getting used to the wind blown in the face, mastering the fleeting sense of equilibrium on a bike or, as I have just shown, domesticating the bursts of pain in the legs are not only reminders that one's body is alive. They also redefine what flourishing represents for humans, both in relation to their physical being in the world and to the social interactions they engage in during mundane urban mobilities.
By investigating the sensescapes of cycling and the slow articulation of sensory tolerances I propose the use of utopianism as a method (Levitas 2013) to imagine better societies where cycling is no longer marginal. In its ontological mode, speaking at the level of individual experience, utopia as method goes beyond simply asking how might the social institutions look like in a post-car future. It aims as well to show that humans have themselves the capacity to redefine the nature of their everyday mobilities. Away from fast, utilitarian and growth oriented transportation, and towards slower, more simple and more convivial forms of mobilities.
Historically, cycling has nurtured a multitude of competing, sometimes even conflicting, visions ... more Historically, cycling has nurtured a multitude of competing, sometimes even conflicting, visions about what represents the 'good society'. Indeed, the bicycle is 'a complex socio-technical object whose meanings and uses are shaped variously through its histories, production and uses' (Vivanco 2013: 26). As such, the bicycle utopias meant different things to different people at different times in history.
In late 1800s, cycling was mainly a bourgeois pastime, while the bicycle was associated with aspirations of modernity and progress (Furness 2010; Reid 2015). Conversely, the first half of the last century has witnessed a democratisation of the practice, particularly driven by feminist and socialist dreams, while in the second half environmentalist and anarchist movements kept the hopes of cycling futures alive (Horton 2006). Today, cycling is inspiring visions of sustainability, urban regeneration and getting economies back on track.
Drawing on research of contemporary cultural representations of cycling from literature, graphic novels and other artistic experimentations, as well as from policy documents such as cycling plans from London and from across Europe, this paper aims to unpack the form, content and function of current bicycle utopias (Levitas 2013). In doing so, I argue that aspirations of truly 'sharing cities' can only be achieved once the utopian promises of fast and seamless mobilities, as well as their associated hopes of unfettered economic growth, are challenged upfront.
The argument of this presentation is that cycling creates meaning through the act of moving toget... more The argument of this presentation is that cycling creates meaning through the act of moving together in time. Such instances of cycling together, that are so salient outside the city, for leisure or for sport, are almost invisible in cities. This paper examines why is this happening and how can this situation be addressed. Ultimately, my purpose is to assess how cycling together outside the city can contribute to the success of urban cycling practices.
I am addressing here the togetherness of cycling, a topic which is largely neglected by most of social scientists. Being mobile together is imbued with meaning, as 'moving in accordance brings about senses and feelings of solidarity and belonging without verbal, communicative and symbolic forms of action' (Adey 2010: 168).
Cycling is often described in academic literature with tropes suggesting different degrees of togetherness or, at least, communal ideals, such as citizenship (Aldred 2010), shared identity (Carlsson 2002), even revolution (Mapes 2009). Despite such associations, most of the academic literature on cycling is nevertheless focused on solidarity practices. The flâneur-cyclist (Oddy 2007, Cox 2008) has become the representative image of the lone cyclist practising an individualized 'tourist gaze' (Urry 2007) in the countryside, thus possibly reflecting cycling's marginalised status in academia. In contrast to these solitary approaches, I propose a focus on more solidary forms of cycling, the practices of cycling together, and on the subsequent construction of meaning by those who take part in them.
The process of meaning making while moving from A to B has been of uttermost importance for different social scientists working in the realm of mobilities studies. For them, it is important to move beyond the general perception of mobility as being unproductive and wasted time (as often reflected in the thinking of planners and engineers), claiming instead that mobility is itself a site of meaning creation, identity formation and even cultural production (Adey 2010; Creswell 2006; Ingold 2011).
Motion and emotion are, as Mimi Sheller puts it, 'kinaesthetically intertwined and produced together through a conjunction of bodies, technologies, and cultural practices' (Sheller 2004: 227). The geographer Tim Cresswell (2006) observes as well that mobility is far from being a chaotic thing and that meaning described on the move is seldom neglected: Stories about mobility, stories that are frequently ideological, connect blood cells to street patterns, reproduction to space travel. Movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning and it is this meaning that jumps scales. It is this issue of meaning that remains absent from accounts of mobility in general, and because it remains absent, important connections are not made (2006: 6-7).
In the cases of co-mobility, such emotions and affects 'rise and surge between bodies', says the geographer Peter Adey (2010: 166). That is to say that the emotions become themselves mobile as a result of not moving in time, but, as Adey explains, 'by simply moving with it' (2010:168): Bodies extend out into more-than-personal bonds and associations as people move with each other. Emotions and affects feed back as they leap between people tying them even closer together. […] Rather than communicating symbolically or discursively, being mobile together in time is 'crucial in both establishing and enhancing a sense of collective purpose and a common understanding' producing feelings of 'well being' (Brennan in Adey 2010: 167-8). The importance of togetherness in the studies of mobility is also echoed by John Urry (2007) who emphasizes 'the essential role of meetings for work, family and social life' in general (2007: 273).
In conclusion, this research into the practice of cycling together is concerned with the production and mobilisation of meaning within cyclists. The individualized and flâneuristic performance of cycling is only one part of the equation in question; cycling is, in the words of anthropologist Luis Vivanco, 'also a collective, expressive, and culturally patterned experience, in the sense that it is organized and constrained by social and political-economic processes, symbolic meanings, and actual skills, practices, and norms involved in riding a bicycle [through a city], each of which transcends what any single individual does or believes' (2013: 95).
Bibliography
Adey, P. (2010) Mobility, New York: Routledge;
Carlsson, C. (2002) Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Edinburgh: AK Press;
Cox, P. (2008) 'Voyeur, Flâneur or Kinaesthete? Cyclotourism and the production of experience', paper presented at the conference Cultural Production and Experience: Strategies, Design and Everyday Life, University of Roskilde, November 13-14;
Cresswell, T. (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Routledge;
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge;
Mapes, J. (2009) Pedaling Revolution. How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities, Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press;
Oddy, N. (2007) 'The Flaneur on Wheels?' in Horton, D; Rosen, P. and Cox, P. (eds.) Cycling and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate;
Sheller, M. (2004) 'Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car' in Featherstone M. et al. (2005) Automobilities, London: Sage;
Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press;
Custom bicycle constructors are able to engage others in emphasizing their cultural capital. In B... more Custom bicycle constructors are able to engage others in emphasizing their cultural capital. In Bucharest they are “untold kings” of a growing online community. Under a gentrified approach on urban cycling, I argue that solid bicycle infrastructures can be achieved by converting these online communities into offline critical mass.
“The number of bicyclists in our city is under 1%. We don't have the bicycle culture in Germany, Austria or Belgium”. This statement by a representative of the Street Administration Department of Bucharest is the main reason authorities aren't investing any money in building cycle lanes. “For now, the priority in Bucharest are the drivers”, Carmen Dinca added this last August. Most of the bicycle lanes in our capital (122 km) have been disbanded this year due to poor design and mis-placement on the sidewalk.
Despite statements by authorities, Bucharest is a burgeoning scene for bicycle culture. More and more people are using bicycles, not only for leisure or shopping, but also for daily commuting. I have carried out an ethnographic research in the midst of a community of custom bicycle constructors in Bucharest, that concluded last year with a master's thesis in anthropology. I argued that those bicycle builders are not mere trend-setters among gentrified bicyclists, but they can also muster cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973) likely to cause changes in urban mobility policies.
Top-down initiatives to building bicycle infrastructure in Bucharest have failed for now. The municipality has spent over 10 million euros for bicycle lanes, soon after taken down for being inadequate. In contrast, several bottom-up initiatives are creating human infrastructure that compensate the physical one (Lugo, 2012): NGOs suing authorities, critical mass actions, internet platforms, community events, illegal alley cat races etc.
PortocalaMecanica.ro (The Clockwork Orange) is an internet platform I launched in March 2009 with the scope of promoting the bicycle culture. It is one of the first media to address the needs of urban cyclists in Romania and it soon was followed by others. We organize several events for the community (flea markets, repair workshops, expositions, bike lessons). Portocala Mecanica has helped bicycling becoming not only more and more visible, but also more and more part of the public agenda.
On the 27th of October 2012, Bucharest hosted a protest in favor of bike lanes, gathering more than 1.000 participants. It was considered the biggest bicyclist gathering in history in Bucharest. Still, the number isn't enough to beat that ominous 1%. We are certainly more that that. Portocala Mecanica's latest ambition was to create a national online census to get a fairer picture of our ever-growing community. In February 2013 we launched www.catibiciclistisuntem.ro that will be available for completion until the end of March.
This presentation investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through whic... more This presentation investigates post-automobility futures by exploring the mechanisms through which the bicycle could reconfigure urban mobilities and catalyse change towards slow living. Drawing upon readings in mobility and utopian studies, the presentation considers three complementary aspects that could be decisive in the transition towards a 'slow bicycle system'.
I investigate first the potential of embodied and sociable practices of cycling to prefigure mobility futures that successfully challenge the 'car system'. Using (auto)ethnographic and mobile methods to document my own cycling, as well as that of various groups in London and Amsterdam, I unveil a cycling subjectivity informed by richly engaged immersions and interactions with the natural and social worlds. Their slowness challenges the dominant mechanical rhythms of automobility and the utilitarian space of the road. I consequently and secondly propose a critique of the current configuration and anticipated trajectory of the car system. I argue that the utopian promises of personal autonomy, freedom and economic progress epitomized by the motorcar have lost their strength. Furthermore, traffic congestion, air pollution, climate change and the shortcomings of neoliberal society could trigger the end of automobility. Instead, and thirdly, I show that a slow bicycle system could be articulated in the 'cracks' of the car system. Building on existing niches of innovations, I outline the steps required for societies to follow so that a slow bicycle system becomes a reality by 2050. I argue against the dominance of the car within the realm of urban movement and against the presupposition that speed constitutes the only way to assess the quality of human mobilities.
Thus, this presentation takes forward contemporary academic debates framing cycling as an alternative or subaltern mobility by claiming its central role in imagining post-automobility futures. Such sustainable futures can only be achieved once the doctrines of fast mobilities and economic growth are called into question.
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Papers by Cosmin Popan
aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
Conference Presentations by Cosmin Popan
While mobile methods are often well suited to elicit the fleeting, the distributed, the multiple, the sensory, the emotional and the kinaesthetic of complex social realities (Law and Urry 2011), their effectiveness in radically re-imagining mobility systems remains sometimes limited. More speculative techniques of research are thus added to the toolbox. For the study of utopian cycling sensescapes, for instance, mobile methods are reinforced through a more self-reflexive approach to how my own sensory tactics as a cyclist are developed through a lengthy process, which becomes visible when auto-ethnographic and auto-biographical accounts are drawn into use. Similarly, the video methods used to study the fragile sociabilities of everyday cycling in the UK are strengthened through supplementary approaches such as the investigation of historical data describing the golden age of mass cycling as well as study trips to countries with more established cycling cultures.
Looking, hearing, the acute sensations of pain, the tiresome ones of feeling too cold or too hot, or even the imperceptible ones of equilibrium constantly come to the fore to articulate my own cycling sensescapes. Yet, they cannot be easily separated from one another, this 'being-in-the-world' requires actually that the whole body is engaged in perception, rather than just a series of individual senses. Latent senses, long-forgotten in the comfortable space of the automobile, come to life, disobedient as they are, once I mount the bike saddle. Building sensory tolerances to deal with such indisciplined stimuli is part and parcel of an appreciation of human flourishing that is radically different from the prevalent contemporary ideas of excessive bodily comfort.
Consider pain, for example, in this auto-ethnographic account of my cycling in London:
Now my left foot is on the kerb, yellow and now green, here I start again [Roaring cars around]. A cyclist in front of me, I'll overtake him probably, raising from the saddle now, two strong pedal strokes, a brief twinge in the calf muscles [Roaring cars], I'm still behind the lazy cyclist, green light ahead. We both pass by a girl on a Boris bike who's pretty slow. And another one who signals a left turn. I stay on the first lane, stopping at the red light again, brakes, foot on the … not on the ground as it turns yellow and green, and I overtake, I overtake the lazy cyclist in front of me. I raise again from the saddle, pedal fast now so others won't catch me. I can still feel the back pain I have from an older accident, it's not very acute though. I can feel the sweat now on my chest, beads of sweat dripping down the abdomen. (Field notes from 2 bicycle rides in London, on 19 January 2015 and 6 March 2015)
Some bursts of mild pain are unavoidable in everyday cycling, resulting in physical side effects, ranging from heating the body, to sweating, to accelerated heartbeats and breathing, to increased amount of saliva in the mouth. Nevertheless, in modernity pain has been institutionalised and turned into a domain of expertise belonging almost exclusively to medicine, generating a cultural fear of pain (Cook 2000).
An alternative perspective, one that reframes the meaning of pain, may be proposed instead: living with pain as part of one's becoming, learning its rules and warnings, even indulging in it are possible and they require an utopian ontology which questions both the nature and the culture of pain. Slowing down becomes then an effort, an accomplishment; slow-as-affect appears visible 'in the form of mobility practices and experiences that directly show the physical work, the struggle, and the fatigue of the movement' (Vannini 2013:122). Enduring the pain as one cycles, as well as recovering from the sometimes mild, sometimes severe, pain of cycling involves a particular form of slowing down, one which rejects notions of instant gratification. A distinctive form of well-being is produced, one which is not likely to be hedonic, but eudaimonic.
Developing sensory tolerances as one cycles can be interpreted as a particular normative idea of what constitutes human flourishing. Getting used to the wind blown in the face, mastering the fleeting sense of equilibrium on a bike or, as I have just shown, domesticating the bursts of pain in the legs are not only reminders that one's body is alive. They also redefine what flourishing represents for humans, both in relation to their physical being in the world and to the social interactions they engage in during mundane urban mobilities.
By investigating the sensescapes of cycling and the slow articulation of sensory tolerances I propose the use of utopianism as a method (Levitas 2013) to imagine better societies where cycling is no longer marginal. In its ontological mode, speaking at the level of individual experience, utopia as method goes beyond simply asking how might the social institutions look like in a post-car future. It aims as well to show that humans have themselves the capacity to redefine the nature of their everyday mobilities. Away from fast, utilitarian and growth oriented transportation, and towards slower, more simple and more convivial forms of mobilities.
In late 1800s, cycling was mainly a bourgeois pastime, while the bicycle was associated with aspirations of modernity and progress (Furness 2010; Reid 2015). Conversely, the first half of the last century has witnessed a democratisation of the practice, particularly driven by feminist and socialist dreams, while in the second half environmentalist and anarchist movements kept the hopes of cycling futures alive (Horton 2006). Today, cycling is inspiring visions of sustainability, urban regeneration and getting economies back on track.
Drawing on research of contemporary cultural representations of cycling from literature, graphic novels and other artistic experimentations, as well as from policy documents such as cycling plans from London and from across Europe, this paper aims to unpack the form, content and function of current bicycle utopias (Levitas 2013). In doing so, I argue that aspirations of truly 'sharing cities' can only be achieved once the utopian promises of fast and seamless mobilities, as well as their associated hopes of unfettered economic growth, are challenged upfront.
I am addressing here the togetherness of cycling, a topic which is largely neglected by most of social scientists. Being mobile together is imbued with meaning, as 'moving in accordance brings about senses and feelings of solidarity and belonging without verbal, communicative and symbolic forms of action' (Adey 2010: 168).
Cycling is often described in academic literature with tropes suggesting different degrees of togetherness or, at least, communal ideals, such as citizenship (Aldred 2010), shared identity (Carlsson 2002), even revolution (Mapes 2009). Despite such associations, most of the academic literature on cycling is nevertheless focused on solidarity practices. The flâneur-cyclist (Oddy 2007, Cox 2008) has become the representative image of the lone cyclist practising an individualized 'tourist gaze' (Urry 2007) in the countryside, thus possibly reflecting cycling's marginalised status in academia. In contrast to these solitary approaches, I propose a focus on more solidary forms of cycling, the practices of cycling together, and on the subsequent construction of meaning by those who take part in them.
The process of meaning making while moving from A to B has been of uttermost importance for different social scientists working in the realm of mobilities studies. For them, it is important to move beyond the general perception of mobility as being unproductive and wasted time (as often reflected in the thinking of planners and engineers), claiming instead that mobility is itself a site of meaning creation, identity formation and even cultural production (Adey 2010; Creswell 2006; Ingold 2011).
Motion and emotion are, as Mimi Sheller puts it, 'kinaesthetically intertwined and produced together through a conjunction of bodies, technologies, and cultural practices' (Sheller 2004: 227). The geographer Tim Cresswell (2006) observes as well that mobility is far from being a chaotic thing and that meaning described on the move is seldom neglected: Stories about mobility, stories that are frequently ideological, connect blood cells to street patterns, reproduction to space travel. Movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning and it is this meaning that jumps scales. It is this issue of meaning that remains absent from accounts of mobility in general, and because it remains absent, important connections are not made (2006: 6-7).
In the cases of co-mobility, such emotions and affects 'rise and surge between bodies', says the geographer Peter Adey (2010: 166). That is to say that the emotions become themselves mobile as a result of not moving in time, but, as Adey explains, 'by simply moving with it' (2010:168): Bodies extend out into more-than-personal bonds and associations as people move with each other. Emotions and affects feed back as they leap between people tying them even closer together. […] Rather than communicating symbolically or discursively, being mobile together in time is 'crucial in both establishing and enhancing a sense of collective purpose and a common understanding' producing feelings of 'well being' (Brennan in Adey 2010: 167-8). The importance of togetherness in the studies of mobility is also echoed by John Urry (2007) who emphasizes 'the essential role of meetings for work, family and social life' in general (2007: 273).
In conclusion, this research into the practice of cycling together is concerned with the production and mobilisation of meaning within cyclists. The individualized and flâneuristic performance of cycling is only one part of the equation in question; cycling is, in the words of anthropologist Luis Vivanco, 'also a collective, expressive, and culturally patterned experience, in the sense that it is organized and constrained by social and political-economic processes, symbolic meanings, and actual skills, practices, and norms involved in riding a bicycle [through a city], each of which transcends what any single individual does or believes' (2013: 95).
Bibliography
Adey, P. (2010) Mobility, New York: Routledge;
Carlsson, C. (2002) Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Edinburgh: AK Press;
Cox, P. (2008) 'Voyeur, Flâneur or Kinaesthete? Cyclotourism and the production of experience', paper presented at the conference Cultural Production and Experience: Strategies, Design and Everyday Life, University of Roskilde, November 13-14;
Cresswell, T. (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Routledge;
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge;
Mapes, J. (2009) Pedaling Revolution. How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities, Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press;
Oddy, N. (2007) 'The Flaneur on Wheels?' in Horton, D; Rosen, P. and Cox, P. (eds.) Cycling and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate;
Sheller, M. (2004) 'Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car' in Featherstone M. et al. (2005) Automobilities, London: Sage;
Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press;
“The number of bicyclists in our city is under 1%. We don't have the bicycle culture in Germany, Austria or Belgium”. This statement by a representative of the Street Administration Department of
Bucharest is the main reason authorities aren't investing any money in building cycle lanes. “For now, the priority in Bucharest are the drivers”, Carmen Dinca added this last August. Most of the bicycle lanes in our capital (122 km) have been disbanded this year due to poor design and mis-placement on the sidewalk.
Despite statements by authorities, Bucharest is a burgeoning scene for bicycle culture. More and more people are using bicycles, not only for leisure or shopping, but also for daily commuting. I have carried out an ethnographic research in the midst of a community of custom bicycle constructors in Bucharest, that concluded last year with a master's thesis in anthropology. I argued that those bicycle builders are not mere trend-setters among gentrified bicyclists, but they can also muster cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973) likely to cause changes in urban mobility policies.
Top-down initiatives to building bicycle infrastructure in Bucharest have failed for now. The municipality has spent over 10 million euros for bicycle lanes, soon after taken down for being inadequate. In contrast, several bottom-up initiatives are creating human infrastructure that compensate the physical one (Lugo, 2012): NGOs suing authorities, critical mass actions, internet platforms, community events, illegal alley cat races etc.
PortocalaMecanica.ro (The Clockwork Orange) is an internet platform I launched in March 2009 with the scope of promoting the bicycle culture. It is one of the first media to address the needs of urban cyclists in Romania and it soon was followed by others. We organize several events for the community (flea markets, repair workshops, expositions, bike lessons). Portocala Mecanica has helped bicycling becoming not only more and more visible, but also more and more part of the public agenda.
On the 27th of October 2012, Bucharest hosted a protest in favor of bike lanes, gathering more than 1.000 participants. It was considered the biggest bicyclist gathering in history in Bucharest. Still, the number isn't enough to beat that ominous 1%. We are certainly more that that. Portocala Mecanica's latest ambition was to create a national online census to get a fairer picture of our ever-growing community. In February 2013 we launched www.catibiciclistisuntem.ro that will be available for completion until the end of March.
aspects like electric cars, or even automated cars, if conceived in the same socio-technical system as current cars, contribute only marginally to liveability in cities.
While mobile methods are often well suited to elicit the fleeting, the distributed, the multiple, the sensory, the emotional and the kinaesthetic of complex social realities (Law and Urry 2011), their effectiveness in radically re-imagining mobility systems remains sometimes limited. More speculative techniques of research are thus added to the toolbox. For the study of utopian cycling sensescapes, for instance, mobile methods are reinforced through a more self-reflexive approach to how my own sensory tactics as a cyclist are developed through a lengthy process, which becomes visible when auto-ethnographic and auto-biographical accounts are drawn into use. Similarly, the video methods used to study the fragile sociabilities of everyday cycling in the UK are strengthened through supplementary approaches such as the investigation of historical data describing the golden age of mass cycling as well as study trips to countries with more established cycling cultures.
Looking, hearing, the acute sensations of pain, the tiresome ones of feeling too cold or too hot, or even the imperceptible ones of equilibrium constantly come to the fore to articulate my own cycling sensescapes. Yet, they cannot be easily separated from one another, this 'being-in-the-world' requires actually that the whole body is engaged in perception, rather than just a series of individual senses. Latent senses, long-forgotten in the comfortable space of the automobile, come to life, disobedient as they are, once I mount the bike saddle. Building sensory tolerances to deal with such indisciplined stimuli is part and parcel of an appreciation of human flourishing that is radically different from the prevalent contemporary ideas of excessive bodily comfort.
Consider pain, for example, in this auto-ethnographic account of my cycling in London:
Now my left foot is on the kerb, yellow and now green, here I start again [Roaring cars around]. A cyclist in front of me, I'll overtake him probably, raising from the saddle now, two strong pedal strokes, a brief twinge in the calf muscles [Roaring cars], I'm still behind the lazy cyclist, green light ahead. We both pass by a girl on a Boris bike who's pretty slow. And another one who signals a left turn. I stay on the first lane, stopping at the red light again, brakes, foot on the … not on the ground as it turns yellow and green, and I overtake, I overtake the lazy cyclist in front of me. I raise again from the saddle, pedal fast now so others won't catch me. I can still feel the back pain I have from an older accident, it's not very acute though. I can feel the sweat now on my chest, beads of sweat dripping down the abdomen. (Field notes from 2 bicycle rides in London, on 19 January 2015 and 6 March 2015)
Some bursts of mild pain are unavoidable in everyday cycling, resulting in physical side effects, ranging from heating the body, to sweating, to accelerated heartbeats and breathing, to increased amount of saliva in the mouth. Nevertheless, in modernity pain has been institutionalised and turned into a domain of expertise belonging almost exclusively to medicine, generating a cultural fear of pain (Cook 2000).
An alternative perspective, one that reframes the meaning of pain, may be proposed instead: living with pain as part of one's becoming, learning its rules and warnings, even indulging in it are possible and they require an utopian ontology which questions both the nature and the culture of pain. Slowing down becomes then an effort, an accomplishment; slow-as-affect appears visible 'in the form of mobility practices and experiences that directly show the physical work, the struggle, and the fatigue of the movement' (Vannini 2013:122). Enduring the pain as one cycles, as well as recovering from the sometimes mild, sometimes severe, pain of cycling involves a particular form of slowing down, one which rejects notions of instant gratification. A distinctive form of well-being is produced, one which is not likely to be hedonic, but eudaimonic.
Developing sensory tolerances as one cycles can be interpreted as a particular normative idea of what constitutes human flourishing. Getting used to the wind blown in the face, mastering the fleeting sense of equilibrium on a bike or, as I have just shown, domesticating the bursts of pain in the legs are not only reminders that one's body is alive. They also redefine what flourishing represents for humans, both in relation to their physical being in the world and to the social interactions they engage in during mundane urban mobilities.
By investigating the sensescapes of cycling and the slow articulation of sensory tolerances I propose the use of utopianism as a method (Levitas 2013) to imagine better societies where cycling is no longer marginal. In its ontological mode, speaking at the level of individual experience, utopia as method goes beyond simply asking how might the social institutions look like in a post-car future. It aims as well to show that humans have themselves the capacity to redefine the nature of their everyday mobilities. Away from fast, utilitarian and growth oriented transportation, and towards slower, more simple and more convivial forms of mobilities.
In late 1800s, cycling was mainly a bourgeois pastime, while the bicycle was associated with aspirations of modernity and progress (Furness 2010; Reid 2015). Conversely, the first half of the last century has witnessed a democratisation of the practice, particularly driven by feminist and socialist dreams, while in the second half environmentalist and anarchist movements kept the hopes of cycling futures alive (Horton 2006). Today, cycling is inspiring visions of sustainability, urban regeneration and getting economies back on track.
Drawing on research of contemporary cultural representations of cycling from literature, graphic novels and other artistic experimentations, as well as from policy documents such as cycling plans from London and from across Europe, this paper aims to unpack the form, content and function of current bicycle utopias (Levitas 2013). In doing so, I argue that aspirations of truly 'sharing cities' can only be achieved once the utopian promises of fast and seamless mobilities, as well as their associated hopes of unfettered economic growth, are challenged upfront.
I am addressing here the togetherness of cycling, a topic which is largely neglected by most of social scientists. Being mobile together is imbued with meaning, as 'moving in accordance brings about senses and feelings of solidarity and belonging without verbal, communicative and symbolic forms of action' (Adey 2010: 168).
Cycling is often described in academic literature with tropes suggesting different degrees of togetherness or, at least, communal ideals, such as citizenship (Aldred 2010), shared identity (Carlsson 2002), even revolution (Mapes 2009). Despite such associations, most of the academic literature on cycling is nevertheless focused on solidarity practices. The flâneur-cyclist (Oddy 2007, Cox 2008) has become the representative image of the lone cyclist practising an individualized 'tourist gaze' (Urry 2007) in the countryside, thus possibly reflecting cycling's marginalised status in academia. In contrast to these solitary approaches, I propose a focus on more solidary forms of cycling, the practices of cycling together, and on the subsequent construction of meaning by those who take part in them.
The process of meaning making while moving from A to B has been of uttermost importance for different social scientists working in the realm of mobilities studies. For them, it is important to move beyond the general perception of mobility as being unproductive and wasted time (as often reflected in the thinking of planners and engineers), claiming instead that mobility is itself a site of meaning creation, identity formation and even cultural production (Adey 2010; Creswell 2006; Ingold 2011).
Motion and emotion are, as Mimi Sheller puts it, 'kinaesthetically intertwined and produced together through a conjunction of bodies, technologies, and cultural practices' (Sheller 2004: 227). The geographer Tim Cresswell (2006) observes as well that mobility is far from being a chaotic thing and that meaning described on the move is seldom neglected: Stories about mobility, stories that are frequently ideological, connect blood cells to street patterns, reproduction to space travel. Movement is rarely just movement; it carries with it the burden of meaning and it is this meaning that jumps scales. It is this issue of meaning that remains absent from accounts of mobility in general, and because it remains absent, important connections are not made (2006: 6-7).
In the cases of co-mobility, such emotions and affects 'rise and surge between bodies', says the geographer Peter Adey (2010: 166). That is to say that the emotions become themselves mobile as a result of not moving in time, but, as Adey explains, 'by simply moving with it' (2010:168): Bodies extend out into more-than-personal bonds and associations as people move with each other. Emotions and affects feed back as they leap between people tying them even closer together. […] Rather than communicating symbolically or discursively, being mobile together in time is 'crucial in both establishing and enhancing a sense of collective purpose and a common understanding' producing feelings of 'well being' (Brennan in Adey 2010: 167-8). The importance of togetherness in the studies of mobility is also echoed by John Urry (2007) who emphasizes 'the essential role of meetings for work, family and social life' in general (2007: 273).
In conclusion, this research into the practice of cycling together is concerned with the production and mobilisation of meaning within cyclists. The individualized and flâneuristic performance of cycling is only one part of the equation in question; cycling is, in the words of anthropologist Luis Vivanco, 'also a collective, expressive, and culturally patterned experience, in the sense that it is organized and constrained by social and political-economic processes, symbolic meanings, and actual skills, practices, and norms involved in riding a bicycle [through a city], each of which transcends what any single individual does or believes' (2013: 95).
Bibliography
Adey, P. (2010) Mobility, New York: Routledge;
Carlsson, C. (2002) Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Edinburgh: AK Press;
Cox, P. (2008) 'Voyeur, Flâneur or Kinaesthete? Cyclotourism and the production of experience', paper presented at the conference Cultural Production and Experience: Strategies, Design and Everyday Life, University of Roskilde, November 13-14;
Cresswell, T. (2006) On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Routledge;
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge;
Mapes, J. (2009) Pedaling Revolution. How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities, Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press;
Oddy, N. (2007) 'The Flaneur on Wheels?' in Horton, D; Rosen, P. and Cox, P. (eds.) Cycling and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate;
Sheller, M. (2004) 'Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car' in Featherstone M. et al. (2005) Automobilities, London: Sage;
Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press;
“The number of bicyclists in our city is under 1%. We don't have the bicycle culture in Germany, Austria or Belgium”. This statement by a representative of the Street Administration Department of
Bucharest is the main reason authorities aren't investing any money in building cycle lanes. “For now, the priority in Bucharest are the drivers”, Carmen Dinca added this last August. Most of the bicycle lanes in our capital (122 km) have been disbanded this year due to poor design and mis-placement on the sidewalk.
Despite statements by authorities, Bucharest is a burgeoning scene for bicycle culture. More and more people are using bicycles, not only for leisure or shopping, but also for daily commuting. I have carried out an ethnographic research in the midst of a community of custom bicycle constructors in Bucharest, that concluded last year with a master's thesis in anthropology. I argued that those bicycle builders are not mere trend-setters among gentrified bicyclists, but they can also muster cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973) likely to cause changes in urban mobility policies.
Top-down initiatives to building bicycle infrastructure in Bucharest have failed for now. The municipality has spent over 10 million euros for bicycle lanes, soon after taken down for being inadequate. In contrast, several bottom-up initiatives are creating human infrastructure that compensate the physical one (Lugo, 2012): NGOs suing authorities, critical mass actions, internet platforms, community events, illegal alley cat races etc.
PortocalaMecanica.ro (The Clockwork Orange) is an internet platform I launched in March 2009 with the scope of promoting the bicycle culture. It is one of the first media to address the needs of urban cyclists in Romania and it soon was followed by others. We organize several events for the community (flea markets, repair workshops, expositions, bike lessons). Portocala Mecanica has helped bicycling becoming not only more and more visible, but also more and more part of the public agenda.
On the 27th of October 2012, Bucharest hosted a protest in favor of bike lanes, gathering more than 1.000 participants. It was considered the biggest bicyclist gathering in history in Bucharest. Still, the number isn't enough to beat that ominous 1%. We are certainly more that that. Portocala Mecanica's latest ambition was to create a national online census to get a fairer picture of our ever-growing community. In February 2013 we launched www.catibiciclistisuntem.ro that will be available for completion until the end of March.
I investigate first the potential of embodied and sociable practices of cycling to prefigure mobility futures that successfully challenge the 'car system'. Using (auto)ethnographic and mobile methods to document my own cycling, as well as that of various groups in London and Amsterdam, I unveil a cycling subjectivity informed by richly engaged immersions and interactions with the natural and social worlds. Their slowness challenges the dominant mechanical rhythms of automobility and the utilitarian space of the road. I consequently and secondly propose a critique of the current configuration and anticipated trajectory of the car system. I argue that the utopian promises of personal autonomy, freedom and economic progress epitomized by the motorcar have lost their strength. Furthermore, traffic congestion, air pollution, climate change and the shortcomings of neoliberal society could trigger the end of automobility. Instead, and thirdly, I show that a slow bicycle system could be articulated in the 'cracks' of the car system. Building on existing niches of innovations, I outline the steps required for societies to follow so that a slow bicycle system becomes a reality by 2050. I argue against the dominance of the car within the realm of urban movement and against the presupposition that speed constitutes the only way to assess the quality of human mobilities.
Thus, this presentation takes forward contemporary academic debates framing cycling as an alternative or subaltern mobility by claiming its central role in imagining post-automobility futures. Such sustainable futures can only be achieved once the doctrines of fast mobilities and economic growth are called into question.