PRESS RELEASE
May 23, 2016
Citizens and policy makers help boost sustainable urban mobility
From London and Paris to Barcelona and Berlin, authorities seek to boost cycling to create livable cities. Some cities succeed in creating a lasting result. In other cities, urban cycling barely increases. With over hundred photo’s, maps, graphs and tables the richly illustrated book Cycling Cities shows why some capitals and business centers became real cycling cities, while others did not. The book analyzes 100 years of urban cycling policy and practice in 14 European cities in nine countries. It shows how policy makers, activists, and ordinary citizens make – and have made – a difference.
Cycling Cities provides a fascinating new insight into 100 years of urban cycling in Europe. It analyzes urban cycling from the capitals Antwerp, Amsterdam, Budapest, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, to the industrial hubs Eindhoven, Lyon, Manchester, and Southeast Limburg, and the business towns Basel, Enschede, Hannover, Malmö, and Utrecht.
The 14 case studies show how each of the urban areas developed its own unique cycling culture. Over the past century, local European policymakers curtailed or encouraged cycling. They mandated the building or destruction of cycling infrastructures; they granted or outright denied cyclists’ rights to all roads; creating public transit systems in competition or in tandem with walking and cycling; and curbing or facilitating automobility.
The international authors trace the role of authorities and engineers as well as cyclists and community groups in creating local cycling policies and practices. They show how these local outcomes featured in transnational debates on urban mobility and livability alongside traffic management and safety. They compare the urban areas’ varying histories of embracing pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists
Cycling Cities presents a long-term and transnational perspective for everyone interested in today’s urban mobility, sustainability, and cycling. The book offers policymakers, community groups, politicians, scholars, and teachers new insights in the patterns behind the development of cycling in urban traffic.
Cycling Cities is the first outcome of the international research and teaching program Sustainable Urban Mobility, 1890-present (SUM). This program is initiated by Eindhoven University of Technology and the Foundation for the History of Technology in collaboration with an international consortium of universities, government agencies, business, and social organizations.
Ruth Oldenziel, Martin Emanuel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Frank Veraart (Editors) Cycling Cities: The European Experience. One Hundred Years of Policy and Practice
Published by Foundation for the History of Technology and LMU Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society – ISBN 978-90-73192-46-1
256 pages, richly illustrated (ca. 100 photos; 100 tables; 10 maps; 10 graphs; and infographics) and full color; price €37.50. Order at www.cyclingcities.info
Note for the editor:
Contact Jan Korsten at the Foundation for the History of Technology for more information: j.w.a.korsten@tue.nl