Beyond utilitarian mobilities: cycling senses and the subversion of the car system

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Cycling
• mobilities
• senses
• sensuous ethnography
• video ethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, amongst others, mass cycling events such as Ride London, the worldwide Critical Mass rides or mass media actions such as The Times’ “Cities fit for Cycling Campaign”, the now established “cycling section” in The Guardian or the Copenhagenize Bicycle-friendly Cities Index.

2. As a critical point, the heightened senses of balance and temperature are particular to fast cycle commuters, rather than the general cycling populace. This observation has critical implications for the design of future cycling systems, which should accommodate cyclists of all capabilities and skills.

3. Such arrhythmia and its problems are removed (or at least changed) when cycle-space is added to road-space.

4. This impoverishment is less visible in certain types of cars: sport convertibles, cars that still offer a manual transmission, cars that are not driverless.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/J017698/1].