Cycling politics: imagining sustainable cycling futures in Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the ways in which cycling politics, established bicycle advocates and “new” forms of net-based activism in Sweden imagine and shape future cycling. The study engages with policy analysis, cultural imaginaries, cycling citizenship, power and urban planning in order to analyse expressions of contemporary cycling politics in Sweden, with a particular focus on the national strategy for increased and safer cycling, launched in 2017. This strategy, including how advocacy responded to the strategy, and topics raised in online blogs, reflects core differences in top-down/bottom-up views on cycling as contested practice: from more pragmatic, policy- and solution-oriented approaches to making everyday cycling experiences political. The analyses address both established and alternative ways of influencing mobility transitions and seek to address the alternative imaginings for everyday cycling that their approaches and strategies suggest. This includes analysing their role in shaping or changing cycling in the future and what these cases may tell us about the sustainability of cycling itself at both local and national levels. It is argued that, while well-established organizations already enjoy a position of access to planners and policy-makers, it remains important to find ways of including the perspectives of emergent, on-line-based initiatives and blogs, which also formulate critical perspectives on everyday cycling.