ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter discusses the implications for cycling as a vehicle for urban transformation. Here I argue that current manifestations of urban cycling are not helping us confront the structure of market economies; rather, particular narrowly conceived variants of cycling are being materialised whose success is being measured (and indeed they are only being implemented) based on their ability to enable the continuation of unsustainable growth economies, albeit with (at best) some modest decoupling. In helping to reproduce current patterns of growth, current narrow economistic articulations of cycling are at best part of a ‘weak green economy’ and at worst represent a delusional neoliberal fantasy that serves to obfuscate the tensions between economic growth, efficiency, population and inequality. Whilst the focus remains on instrumental movement whose success is measured with respect to its contribution to economic growth (whether that be faster circulation times, more desirable retail destinations, more productive human capital, the creation of predictive products, or a more globally competitive image), cycling will remain central to the game of continued unsustainable economic growth. Only when other qualities of it are foregrounded – its slowness, its sociality, its openness, its playfulness – and its success is measured in relation to its role in place-making and inclusivity rather than instrumental mobility, might urban cycling enable us to move beyond our current unsustainable growth paradigm. Thus the chapter concludes by arguing that it is not just how we transport ourselves that matters, but the goals to which that transport is directed that dictate its sustainability. Contemporary cycling policy urgently needs to recognise this.
