SYMBOLIC STRUGGLE IN CYCLING POLICY AND SMART MOBILITY

Abstract

This article seeks to disclose the symbolic game in the process of development of the cycling policy in the Federal District (FD), as part of the urban planning of Brasília, with regard to the active mobility policies implemented in the last 15 years, related to the resignification of mobility based on the use of bicycles, in the context of the Human, Smart, Creative and Sustainable City (CHICS). The analysis is carried out from a systemic and relational perspective of the structures of domination proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, based on the assumption of socially and historically constructed everyday life. The study will seek to elucidate whether the cycling policy in the FD would have emerged from microprocesses of social construction that would denote the formation of a local cycling culture. Or, on the other hand, if the public actions would have been the result of symbolic domination and meaning formatting towards an agenda aimed at reframing Brasília as a smart city. A contextual turn is suggested, based on the various actors’ dynamics’ change as established in Latour’s actor-network theory, which considers a collective consciousness formation based on the use of more integrated, homogeneous and cohesive mobility solutions in the urban context of CHICS. The study deals with the dialectic-inductive methodology, observing the different positions in the application of the instrument.