Speaker
Description
Mobilities and transport research frequently condense both walking and cycling under the label of active travel, that positively associates with a low-carbon transition, a healthy lifestyle and physical exercise. Treated as almost interchangeable alternatives for certain distances and purposes, however, within the context of the automobile system of European cities, they are also positioned as antagonists, competing for political attention as well as for space and respect on the road (or on what is left of it).
Intermodal and multimodal perspectives that relate to the comparisons, competition but also complementation of both modes and, thus, could illustrate the potential of promoting walking and cycling together, are, however, rare.
Walking and cycling, therefore, require a closer look, with regard to their integration with everyday life and the specific meanings they convey, and especially at the quality of their mutual relationship.
In order to explore this quality, we investigate how practices of walking and cycling are interacting and negotiated.
We take the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic as an analytical lens and draw on the perspective of social practice theories. Our analysis is based on focus group discussions on walking and cycling experiences during the pandemic in an urban neighbourhood in Frankfurt (Main), Germany.
We identify and explore four settings in which walking and cycling are negotiated: (1) identification, facilitated by routines of commuting practices and symbolic meanings of walking and cycling, (2) everyday optimisation, which encompasses meanings of time pressure, feasibility and physical exercise, (3) conflicts, centred on the lack of norms and competences of interacting on the street, and (4) policies, which determine the spatial restrictions and symbolic meanings attached to walking and cycling.
Our analysis raises further questions on hierarchies among transport practices, social norms and ambivalences of efficiency pressures and deceleration and discusses the value of social practices theories. The negotiations in the four settings demonstrate the challenges of joining forces in multimodality to propose an alternative vision to the current car-centred system. Set in the context of increasing polarization over the expansion of cycling infrastructure in Germany, the paper speaks to the conference theme of contestations around transforming mobility and infrastructures.
Biography
Monika Pentenrieder is a research associate in Mobility Research at the Institute of Human Geography at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. In her PhD project, she explores the qualitative experiences of walking and cycling during the Covid-19-pandemic, applying a social practice perspective.
