This seminar focuses on urban cycling as a subject of interdisciplinary reflection, using planning, design, historical, and environmental humanities perspectives. It will analyze how the bicycle, as an innovative technology, has offered new possibilities for embodied and cultural practices, as well as pressing urban demands and social opportunities in American cities.
Divided into three parts, the seminar will start with introductory dimensions related to cycling: the bicycle itself as an evolving technology that has shaped cultural practices; the act of cycling and its various functions, dimensions and implications; and the cycling spaces, including the environmental conditions that affect and are affected by the practice. The next section will focus on five “big” cycling themes: the questions of “who,” “where,” “how,” “why,” and “with what”? Here, the seminar will bring important reflections and challenges of cycling, such as: different profiles of cyclists and patterns of exclusion; the history of traffic separation and regulations that influence cycling politics of today; the most relevant factors to encourage or prevent people from cycling; materiality and the question of the sustainability of bicycles in a scenario of urban growth and climate change. Finally, the third part will bring a context-specific analysis of the elements above, with a focus on the cycling history of North and South American cities, as well as European ones.
- Trainer/in: Talitta Reitz