The Gross Potential for Cycling: planning for human scale urban mobility (original) (raw)

2021, Transport in Human Scale Cities

The (re)turn to human scale cities is inseparable from the shift of mobility paradigms towards sustainable modes of transport. As car dominance steadily transformed what was once public space into road space (Sheller and Urry, 2003), growing congestion and pollution have decreased the quality of life and equity among citizens. Non-motorized transport, and especially cycling, is associated with higher levels of happiness and emotional wellbeing (Zhu and Fan, 2018). It has been framed as a means to democratize the city (Cox, 2019) and as a convivial tool that increases opportunities for social relationships (Illich, 1973, 1974), in addition to other widely recognized environmental and economic benefits. Cycling, therefore, establishes and ensures mobility on a human scale (Quee and Bijlsma, 2018). Nevertheless, despite the growing policy and academic interest in cycling, when compared with other modes of transport little attention has been paid to it (Heinen et al., 2010), and analysis and planning methods have not kept pace with demand (Kuzmyak et al., 2014). Promoting a modal shift towards cycling is a complex process, particularly in cities dominated by the car-centric paradigm, which cannot reproduce the path of champion cycling cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Starter cycling cities combine poor cycling conditions with low cycling rates (Dufour, 2010), where the lack of cycling culture and technical know-how limits strategies to sporadic interventions (such as hastily planned infrastructure or symbolic bike sharing systems). Long-term commitment is also weakened as cycling provision lacks the high profile of other infrastructure investments (such as, for example, the metro) and is associated with being 'cheap' (Aldred, 2013).