Workshop 2: Non-motorized mobility – Walking and Biking

Copenhagen, April 21st 2018 

The workshop addresses walking and cycling both as an upcoming and sustainable modes of transport in the bigger cities of the Nordic Region and through the lense of walking/biking regimes. Looking at these practices as a regime, implies the analysis of walking and biking at multiple levels, in terms of culture, economy, planning, and practice. Currently there is a clear division between the Nordic countries in this respect, where DK serves as a model biking friendly regimes with a high level of overall biking and with a higher equality regarding gender and age. This workshop will focus on the potentials of advancing biking as a daily mode of transport in all Nordic Countries, and address new modes of biking such as Mountain and sports-biking as well as bike sharing systems. In what ways are such new modes of biking gendered? How can they be made more inclusive in terms of planning and innovations in designs etc.? How can the bike systems be linked to city wide transportation and access for all?

Keynote speakers

Mimi Sheller

Director, Center for Mobilities Research and Policy
Professor of Sociology
Drexel University

The Velo-Mobile Commons for an Equitable Smart City

There is an emerging movement for “mobility justice” that is calling for greater social equity in urban planning and transport policy. This talk will present recent urban social movements in several American cities that have criticized active transport and new mobility policies (including the implementation of bike share, bike lanes, and smart mobilities) for being “Eurocentric” and “white.” Movements such as The Untokening, Slow Roll Chicago, and Equiticity specifically call into question the adoption of Nordic policies that they argue are not transferable to the deep structures of racial and gender injustice embedded in US urban contexts. In developing a community-based, anti-racist, LGBT-friendly and more equitable practice of community bike rides, these movements shift attention away from bicycling as transport, and focus more on the role of cycling in building health, supporting local economies and community, and overcoming social fragmentation and violence. This analysis will link such movements to the concept of the “mobile commons” and will consider how such practices of commoning mobility – including those from the Global South --  might offer alternative visions to the technologically-determined smart city. How can community-based critical perspectives on mobility justice help us reflect critically on the internationally circulating representations of the Nordic bicycling experience and its gendered dimensions, and more widely on the policy mobilities of the smart city?

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

Rum, Sted, Mobilitet og By (MOSPUS),
Designing Human Technologies,
Associate professor, Institut for Mennesker og Teknologi
Roskilde University

Is cycling in Copenhagen equal for all?

The question of how to get more people to cycle has spread to many cities around the world. Copenhagen is often identified as having achieved considerable success in this regard, but there is a danger that the positive cycling narrative that prevails in Copenhagen may block critical discussion regarding the right to city space. Drawing from qualitative research conducted in Copenhagen as part of an “Urban Cycle Mobilities” project, this talk discusses how the automobile system that privileges cars over bikes is still dominant and which kind of consequences this have for different users.