Cycling Through Intersections: Regimes of Velomobility in Calgary and Amsterdam

Date
2017
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Abstract
Studying mobilities means paying attention to practices, subjectivities, materialities, sociospatially co-constituted spaces, and the complex social, political, and economic milieus in which planners, policy makers, and mobile subjects operate. When the complexities and interplays of these aspects of mobility are considered together, we can describe regimes of mobility. This dissertation focuses on a specific form of mobility: velomobility (mobility by bicycle). It presents a comparative analysis of the regimes of velomobility in two cities: Calgary, Canada, and Amsterdam, Netherlands. It draws from a wide range of evidence, including 102 semi-structured interviews conducted with cyclists, 24 interviews conducted with policy makers, document analysis (including a visual content and thematic analysis of print advertisements), and ethnographic research (including ethnographic photography). By comparing and contrasting these two regimes of velomobility, this dissertation seeks to de-naturalize velomobility by highlighting the ways that politics and policies affect mobile subjectivities and associated practices by enabling or constraining urban forms, by influencing the design and development of transportation infrastructure, and by encouraging or restricting automobility. Drawing on notions of governmentality, sociospatial theory, risk, class habitus, and the performance of identity, this research project sits at the intersections of several theoretical frameworks as it explores the intersections through which cyclists move.
Description
Keywords
Geography, Sociology, Sociology--Theory and Methods, Sociology--Transportation, Urban and Regional Planning
Citation
Ponto, J. (2017). Cycling Through Intersections: Regimes of Velomobility in Calgary and Amsterdam (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25508