Improving and scaling up cycling infrastructure under pandemic urbanism

In response to the present Covid-19 pandemic and the need to decarbonize the transport sector, city leaders and communities are rethinking past assumptions regarding transport planning and infrastructural development and have renewed interest in promoting cycling as a sustainable transport mode. Infrastructural interventions that improve safety and comfort and widen access to cycling are necessary to ‘mainstream’ cycling and make it more inclusive, but face difficulties in changing car-centric infrastructures and mobility behaviours. In order to understand the contested and contingent nature of this process of change, more attention is needed to the interplay of design, planning and policy-making decisions. With this aim, this research project compares the politics and practices of cycling infrastructure development in the Greater Manchester and Greater Toronto areas, which coincide in featuring contexts of entrenched motorization, currently deficient infrastructural conditions for cycling, and limited institutional and political capacity for effective change.

Faculty Supervisor:

Scott Prudham

Student:

Partner:

University of Manchester

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Toronto

Program: