Living Mobility Transitions towards Bicycling: Designing Practices through Co-Creation and Socially Influencing Systems (original) (raw)
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Many cities try to induce a uptake in cycling to profit from the diverse benefits of cycling. But mobility patterns vary from city to city and depend on their ‚context’. Therefore, an effective uptake requires, the re-configuration of this context, i.e. behaviour change, as mobility patterns depend on their physical, social and individual ‚context’. Both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ interventions (typically ‘behaviour change interventions’ respectively ‚infrastructure’) can achieve such re-configurations. Evidence indicates that systematically developed, targeted and combined sets of interventions are more effective than so called ISLAGIATT policy making (it-seems-like-a-good-idea-at-that-time). But interventions are rarely informed by evidence, theory based or systematically combined, but often treated separately – through ‘narrow lenses’: Urban design by its very nature relies primarily on hard interventions (like cycle lanes) and hence misses to employ many necessary and effective interventions beyond infrastructure. This paper attempts to introduce a new approach to understand and develop the field through combining existing models from psychology, health policy, and urban design to a synthesised theoretical framework. This framework was then used to structure (I.) a literature review on variables that are proven to influence cycling and (II.) a policy content analysis of London-related cycling/transport policy documents. Both were used to reflect on and extend the theoretical framework, which as a result provides a comprehensive overview of ways in which urban design can/could, but also can/could not contribute to an uptake in cycling. It was also found that the re-configuration or the re-design of urban space and physical features (i.e urban design) can be and is used as a powerful tool to achieve behaviour change by providing or denying “opportunity” (possibilism or determinism). But it became equally clear that if important psychological aspects (habits, motivations or ‘tipping-points’) are rarely adequately addressed, and Urban Design is likely to not unlock the full potential that its interventions could have. This findings and the framework could help to both structure research and practice in Urban Design even beyond cycling by identifying and addressing particular behavioural aspects more systematically.
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