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ues effectively that consistent coherent support for cycling across all sectors of society is required in order to develop a bicycle system which makes cycling not driving the obvious mode of short distance urban travel countries such as the netherlands denmark and germany are well advanced over north america and australia in every important respect from allocation of transport spending on cycling to development of cycling infrastructure to land use and planning rules to driver awareness and cycling education nevertheless and for good reason issues of infrastructure loom large it now seems evident to the point of obviousness that new city cycling cannot be produced without the provision of a dedicated network of cycling routes of a quality sufficient to appeal to everyone pucher and buehler s previous research demonstrates this as the key difference between countries with high and low levels of cycling so whilst its message is undoubtedly broader city cycling s biggest impact might be in pushing us closer to consensus a consensus which is i think established across the scientific community but lagging across advocacy that the two main means of mainstreaming cycling are infrastructural first the taming of motorised traffic to speeds which make cycling plausible even for those the vast majority of people nervous about sharing space with it and second wherever that is not for transient reasons of political will done most likely on bigger and busier roads cycling s separation from and prioritisation over motorised traffic whilst the contrasts between cycle friendly northern europe and car centric anglophone countries seem to cry out for strong critique of the latter the book is unfailingly polite in tone given its intended readership needs to be persuaded rather than offended this is probably good diplomacy it does sometimes feel though that the passion which surely animates advocacy of more cycling and which helps explain that advocacy has gone awol so one cost of diplomacy is a certain tediousness in both description the netherlands is like this the us is like this and analysis the dutch prioritise cycling but north americans don t the book s impetus to convince more than explain also leaves some questions unasked but why do the dutch prioritise cycling whilst north americans don t what are the ideological and institutional blocks and barriers and how might they be overcome for similarly understandable reasons the book is generally upbeat look how cycling is growing and look how easy it is to grow it faster yet we know this is only one side of the story there are certainly good news stories but let us not be blind to the fact that across most of the world levels of cycling are either negligible and static or else quite high but rapidly declining and in those places cycling needs rescuing not promoting city cycling belongs to an emerging paradigm shift from a paradigm that sees cities built for and around the car towards one which sees cars as inappropriate and bicycles as far more appropriate vehicles for cities there s material useful to this transition here it s good to see kristin lovejoy and susan handy s exploration of cycles and cycle accessories for example we know that many bicycles are not really fit for the purpose of city cycling and it s refreshing to see that recognised also good are three chapters exploring cycling in different sized cities the small medium and mega cycling is sometimes dismissed by critics as more appropriate to smaller than to bigger cities whose populations they say should travel by transit not bike so it s a neat bit of advocacy as well as analysis to break cities down by size and discuss prospects and strategies for cycling at each scale the most fascinating glimpse into cycling is provided by the penultimate chapter exploring cycling in four mega cities london new york paris and tokyo the first three have seen much pro cycling hype and sometimes hysteria and large increases in cycling albeit from very low bases in contrast cycling in tokyo seems prey to benign neglect yet it s by far the most successful cycling mega city with relatively high modal share 16 5 of all trips we are told demographically relatively evenly spread this chapter correspondingly begs the more detailed kind of cultural investigation which is necessarily absent from the book but which is nonetheless well worth pursuing one of the book s big policy pushes is towards dedicated cycling infrastructure something now being pursued in london paris and new york but not tokyo so that using tokyo as a model of best practice in this chapter might almost undermine the main advocacy push of the book as a whole it would be a shame but unsurprising if the case of tokyo were used by opponents of dedicated cycling infrastructure tokyo s apparent success suggests the importance of closer study of how cycling is actually practised how do people cycle there how fast do they tend to go we know quite a lot about cycling policy and practice in north america australia and europe but what about cycling policies and practices elsewhere including japan about which it seems we know too little furthermore the book is silent on the two countries which arguably matter most for the future both of city cycling and our planet china and india that s fair enough city cycling makes no claims to inclusivity or universality but the more global perspective which the case of tokyo provokes raises potentially disturbing questions just what is cycling and what do we want it to become city cycling s desire to persuade more than explain is both its biggest strength and its greatest shortcoming thus my hope is that it ll be read more by people who need persuading of the case for cycling than those seeking to understand it but even were that to be the case i have some concerns in its rush to show how cycling s promotion is compatible with a range of bureaucratic policies and how inserting cycling effectively into the city is mainly about technocratic expertise and practice there s an evacuation of politics from city cycling there are two elements to this evacuation of the political first it prevents the book asking some tough questions to do with continuing neo liberal capitalism about why cycling continues to be so marginalised despite it making so much sense and second what disappears from most chapters is what i would assume is the authors beliefs in the bicycle s capacity to make the world a better place to finish let s look briefly at each of these in turn first if cycling is so good why aren t we all cycling yet if the arguments are so strong and persuasive what s stopping us answering such questions requires political economic social and cultural analyses both of continuing car and oil dependency and of cycling s continuing marginality across the usa australia and uk it remains the case that the advocacy of cycling is tolerated and demands for greater investments in cycling are granted only so long as they don t threaten the car s centrality to everyday life and or they fit with emergent neo liberal discourses around livable for the white affluent middle classes cities so only outrageous extraordinary demands for cycling demands which test the limits of the car system have hope of breaking us even cycling s advocates out of unwittingly reproducing cycling s marginality until we learn to do this mass city cycling cycling as the main vehicular means of urban transport remains a pipe dream second should cycling promotion become a technocratic exercise simply about inserting more cycling into the city as it is for the latest most fashionable set of policy reasons is cycling s main contribution to make our bodies businesses streets and economies more effective and efficient is more cycling enough or do we want something more i don t know about you but i want something more cycling and thus the bicycle is not merely a bureaucratic and technocratic insertion into the city as it is with all its injustices and inequalities to do with class gender race age ability locality and so on cycling and thus the bicycle is also potentially at least in part a disruption to that city and so something which enables the city to be re made in more socially and ecologically just ways so demands for city cycling should not only be ridiculously bold but also unapologetically critical who are we encouraging to cycle white male middle aged commuters not good enough what about for example kids people who need to ride wider than average machines specifically adapted to their needs people travelling as a group who ve every right to travel as sociably as people within a car i think people advocate for cycling because they recognise its capacity to improve the world in a strong qualitative way i agree and i think that we shouldn t sell either ourselves or cycling short all this is perhaps less a criticism of the book than a critique of what cycling might become if left purely to the work of books such as this this book is important but it s not enough it can form only part of a broader struggle city cycling should push city cycling and is to be very highly commended for that but it raises more questions than it answers for future cycling research this is no bad thing cycling research much like cycling advocacy is part of the cycling system we need to establish and maintain in order to first make and then keep cycling normal tags activism bicycle system city cycling cycling john pucher ralph buehler posted in cycling promotion cycling thinking 2 comments cycling advocacy and the global future november 8 2013 there is no global cycling policy and globally cycling s future will emerge from multiple and intersecting trends including responses to big planetary challenges such as climate change the end of cheap oil and the growth in diseases induced by sedentary lifestyles patterns of car ownership and use especially across the world s fastest growing economies changes in cycling s profile particularly in globally iconic cities and the possibilities of new technologies including e bikes and public bike schemes to re define current meanings and practices of mobility but cycling s future and so also the globe s will be importantly shaped by its advocates views of what cycling is for why advocate cycling simply so it becomes easier for us as cyclists to move about by bike or is there a bigger vision of what everyone s lives relationships places and world should be and feel like i think the latter the bicycle is both symbolic of and a pragmatic path to another way of life and this is why so many of us believe in cycling and want to make it bigger the bicycle isn t yet the iconic vehicle to and of a brighter world but it could and should be there s an empty space in the global imagination awaiting it to fill though the idea of the bicycle achieving globally iconic status might seem ridiculous a hundred years ago the same might have been said about the car and the bicycle s deeply loved by people everywhere if we want a different world organised around the bicycle not the car it s our business to make it cycling s global future depends partly on how successfully its advocates build and sell cycling as core to a better world and for that we need bold and powerful visions yet in britain at least no cycling advocacy organisation obviously and proudly struts an alternative global vision the small grassroots activist initiated bicycology perhaps comes closest ctc the national cycling charity endured the time of the car and has understandably found ways of co existing with it though its recent cycletopia initiative seemed a tentative step in a more visionary direction sustrans gives tantalising glimpses of cycling as a route to a better world in its publicity material but doesn t really deliver more a new organisation the cycling embassy of great britain is less constrained more impatient and ambitious but has yet to develop a really compelling and inspiring vision of why transport cycling is worth fighting for and although it s become more common even acceptable to aim not for 2 but 25 of journeys by bike it s still unclear why this absence of big and persuasive stories about why we want more cycling is a problem for two reasons first it means the value of cycling gets colonised by institutional agendas and ambitions institutions embracing cycling is no bad thing but is it generating a bland pragmatic and in the long run counter productive view of cycling is the dominant trope becoming of cycling fitting this world rather than creating a route out towards a better one in projecting the idea that cycling belongs to the same world as today s driving one institutionalised cycling promotion prevents our getting somewhere else cycling s potential sold short and stymied second it s hard to motivate and inspire without a vision as advocates we should help people cycling feel part of something big and transformative a movement changing the world for good then they won t be merely cycling they ll be on a mission and might get more involved but the absence of global and national visions for cycling is felt locally cycle campaigns everywhere struggle against a tide of indifference when they could and should be trail blazing vibrant radical and inspiring visions for their districts at this local level in britain and elsewhere two styles of cycling advocacy tend to co exist often uneasily in one advocates view themselves as cycling s representatives and make suggestions for things that ought to be done usually by others mainly local government for cycling and complain about schemes so many that fail to value cycling here cycling is done to us by those we lobby and to whom we protest however much we love cycling it becomes something given us by others with respect to everyone who engages in such work and i ve done my share such advocacy gets cycling a few crumbs from transport s table and achieves little beyond reproducing itself as marginal it s jaded lacks vision and disempowers both ourselves and others the other style of cycling advocacy is more obviously vision led cycling is not done to us we do cycling although it rarely finds its way into mainstream cycle campaigning this style of advocacy can be found in grassroots projects often workers co ops across the world and it s one to learn adopt and adapt more widely how i m not sure the necessary work is neither obvious nor easy but articulation of a global vision could start in our own backyards and involve two main tasks the priority is to develop and strive to popularise a local vision based around the bicycle we need to open to and convince not just others but also ourselves of a future where cycling is the practical ethical and aesthetic glue joining things together this could entail shifts to advocacy in artistic literary and educational directions to produce locally pertinent and collectively owned stories about cycling s relevance to a fair and sus...
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