Being Smart about Cycling Futures

What is the future of cycling in our cities that struggle to transition to more sustainable and inclusive forms of mobility? What is the role of innovation in ensuring that cycling becomes easier, safer and more accessible for different groups of people? What are Great Bikes and what are Great Cycling Cities? In this course we tackle these questions, but we do so without providing recipes, one-size-fits-all solutions or rankings of innovations. Instead, this course helps you to develop your own approach to cycling futures and innovation. It teaches you to ask critical questions about various aspects of cycling practice and its place in mobility systems, about cycling innovation and the way in which various stakeholders imagine cycling futures. This unique course is grounded in the results of the Smart Cycling Futures project (2016-2020), conducted in the Netherlands but through readings and assignments it engages with the wider world. Course development was made possible by sponsor enviolo.

• Week 1: Imagining Cycling Futures
• What will the future of cycling be like? This module introduces you to one of the main ideas of the course: that cycling futures are multiple and contested. You will be introduced to velotopias- visions of urban future in which cycling is the key mode of transportation- and to cycling innovations. You'll learn about the Smart Cycling Futures research project and the paradoxes encountered in researching innovations. You will notice that scholars and innovators have different ideas on how cycling should become a more important part of our lives. The different futures that we envision prioritize different values and different ideas about cities, mobility and human interaction.
• Week 2: The Bike as Part of Mobility Futures
• In this module you will learn about how cycling and cycling innovations are part of a larger mobility system. First, should the goal of innovations always be to get people to shift to cycling from other modes? And, do innovations forget about the people who are already cycling? How does the practice of cycling fit with other modes? This module will also introduce you to the bike-train system, which has become highly developed in the Netherlands.
• Week 3: Reinventing the Bicycle
• How do innovations change the experience of cycling, its meaning, and how it is governed? This week will introduce you to new technologies and smart innovations, including both bicycles themselves and also bike infrastructure, accessories, and mobile applications. You will learn to recognize how innovations are shaped by the context in which they are developed. You'll understand how innovations can shape futures of cycling, and recognize moments where we may be choosing one future over another. We will also zoom into specifically to the subject of e-bikes, through an academic paper and a conversation with bike component manufacturer enviolo.
• Week 4: Reinventing Cycling Spaces
• This module will look at cycling infrastructure, or: how are we reinventing the spaces where cycling occurs in our cities? You will reflect on what "ideal" cycling infrastructure is and recognize that different types of users, with different needs, share our cycle paths and streets. We will zoom in to the concept of cycling highways - a contested phenomenon- from the perspective of practitioners. We will hear about how smart innovations may influence how different kinds of future cycling spaces function from infrastructure company BAM. Finally, we will focus on how cycling practitioners work, exploring an agile way of working in the context of Amsterdam.
• Week 5: Cycling Futures for All?
• This module is about the social context of cycling. Who cycles now, and who will in the future? Is cycling less accessible for some than for others? We will hit the tip of the iceberg on what can be done to make cycling more accessible for all. You will see how certain social groups can be excluded or negatively impacted by cycling policies or infrastructure projects, and you will see how this issue is often context dependent. We also ask you to bring your own perspective on this complex issue, and learn from your peers.
• Week 6: Final Assignment
• In this final module, you will go through an exercise in which you imagine diverging cycling futures yourself. You will then read about the positive imagined utopian futures of your peers. To wrap up the course, you will write an essay that reflects on the limits of our society's collective mobility imagination and how to overcome them.