Understanding Urban Cycling

Exploring the Relationship Between Mobility, Sustainability and Capital

Justin Spinney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351007108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Écologie

Academic interest in cycling has burgeoned in recent years with significant literature relating to the health and environmental benefits of cycling, the necessity for cycle-specific infrastructure, and the embodied experiences of cycling.

Based upon primary research in a variety of contexts such as London, Shanghai and Taipei, this book demonstrates that recent developments in urban cycling policy and practice are closely linked to broader processes of capital accumulation. It argues that cycling is increasingly caught up in discourses around smart cities that emphasise technological solutions to environmental problems and neoliberal ideas on individual responsibility and bio-political conduct, which only results in solutions that prioritise those who are already mobile. Accordingly, the central argument of the book is not that the popularisation of cycling is inherently bad, but that the manner in which cycling is being popularised gives cause for social and environmental concern. Ultimately the book argues that cycling has now become a vehicle for sustaining pro-growth agendas rather than subverting them or shifting to sustainable no-growth/de-growth and less technologically driven visions of modernity.

This book makes an innovative contribution to the fields of Cycling Studies, Mobilities and Transport and will be of interest to students and academics working in Human Geography, Transport Studies, Urban Studies, Urban Planning, Public Policy, Sociology and Sustainability.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Cycling towards sustainability?
• 2 Towards a political-economy of cycling
• 3 Making up the (productive) cycling subject: excluding the ‘non-standard’ user in cycle infrastructure design
• 4 Extracting surplus value from mobility: cycling policy and practice in London (UK) as a mode of political-economic and bio-political governance
• 5 Economising ‘trick’ cycling on London’s South Bank: culture-led regeneration, spectacle and ‘entertailing’
• 6 Building the Taiwanese mobilityscape: an actor-network account of the journey from Bicycle Kingdom to Cycling Paradise (co-authored with Dr Wen-I Lin)
• 7 Transport solution or vehicle for surveillance capitalism? A case study of dockless public bike-sharing (PBSS2.0) in Shanghai (co-authored with Dr Wen-I Lin)
• 8 Conclusions: where do we go from here?
• Index