ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how research on the thorny issue of how to support increased levels of cycle commuting has led us to see the value, despite its frustrations, of applying the concept of identity to the analysis of cycling as social practice. Policy-makers and green transport activists have been struggling to reverse a decline in 'utility' cycling, that is, day-to-day cycling for mundane trips to local shops, to work or to school. The workplace is a site for the expression, construction and articulation of identities, including transport-related identities. The research was carried out among employees at five organisations in Cambridgeshire, and was designed in partnership with the Cambridge Cycle-Friendly Employers' scheme (CFE). The relationship between cycling and identity, discussing both the ways in which cycling attitudes and behaviours emerge out of people's social location and the role played by the experience of cycling in shaping identities.
