I have a chapter, Feeling Community: Emotional Geographies on Cycling Infrastructure, in a new book entitled, Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities: Practices, Flows, Methods.
The chapter explores how experiences of cycling with others can create emotions of mutuality. Such feelings can encourage utility cycling. The chapter is based on auto-ethnographic experiences while cycling in Chicago.
The publisher – Routledge – has made the following short introduction available:
Cycling has been linked with personal and group identities (Popan 2014; Stoffers 2012; Fincham 2007; Ebert 2004; Carstensen and Ebert 2012; Edwards and Leonard 2009; Skinner and Rosen 2007). Skinner and Rosen (2007, 86) suggest that “identity [should be considered] as intrinsic to people’s transport choices.” They offer three models to think about the relationship between identities and transport. In the first model, identities shaped by social contexts sway transport choices. In the second, travel experiences generate collective identities that influence transport mode choice. In the third, the first two interact, such that transport choices are shaped by identities and in turn travel experiences shape identities.
References
Carstensen, T. A. and Ebert, A.-K. (2012) ‘Chapter 2 Cycling Cultures in Northern Europe: From “Golden Age” to “Renaissance”’, in Cycling and Sustainability. Emerald Group Publishing Limited (Transport and Sustainability, 1), pp. 23–58. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S2044-9941%282012%290000001004 (Accessed: 14 January 2015).
Edwards, A. and Leonard, M. (2009) Fixed: Global Fixed-Gear Bike Culture. London: Laurence King Publishing.
Fincham, B. (2007) ‘Bicycle messengers: image, identity and community’, in Horton, D., Rosen, P., and Cox, P. (eds) Cycling and Society: Transport and Society. Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 179–195.
Popan, C. (2014) ‘Cycling, togetherness and the creation of meaning’, in. Cycling & Society Annual Symposium 2014, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. Available at: http://newcycling.org/events/20131130/cycling-society-annual-symposium-2014.
Skinner, D. and Rosen, P. (2007) ‘Hell is other cyclists: rethinking transport and identity’, in Horton, D., Rosen, P., and Cox, P. (eds) Cycling and Society. Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 83–96.
Stoffers, M. (2012) ‘Cycling as heritage: Representing the history of cycling in the Netherlands’, The Journal of Transport History, 33(1), pp. 92–114. doi: 10.7227/TJTH.33.1.7.
Stoffers, M. and Ebert, A.-K. (2014) ‘New Directions in Cycling Research: A Report on the Cycling History Roundtable at T<SUP>2</SUP>M Madrid’, Mobility in History, 5(1), pp. 9–19. doi: 10.3167/mih.2014.050102.
Njogu Morgan 