From the Right to Mobility to the Right to the Mobile City: Playfulness and Mobilities in Bogotá’s Cycling Activism

Abstract

This paper takes cycling activism in Bogotá (Colombia) as a point of departure to conceptualise the right to the mobile city. Mobility is a key site of intervention for claiming the right to the city, but has so far only been considered in terms of access to the city. Such a reading obscures the ways in which mobile practices themselves can be exercises in participation, appropriation, and management of urban space. In examining biketivists’ playful mobilities, I emphasise the centrality of mobility in the production of the city. Foregrounding play as a means to assert use value over exchange value in the city allows for a non-utilitarian understanding of mobility and a reconceptualisation of the right to mobility along Lefebvrian lines. However, playful practices can also produce spaces of exclusion, and nuance is necessary to avoid totalising accounts of cycling politics.