Constructing Mobile Places between ‘Leisure’ and ‘Transport’: A Case Study of Two Group Cycle Rides

This article contributes to a growing literature examining the sociological significance of mobile places, exploring mobile place-making through an analysis of the practice of weekend group leisure cycling. These rides represent a mobility practice where the main aim of participants may be ‘leisure’ but most infrastructure used is designated for ‘transport’. Using ethnographic methods, the article provides an analysis of rhythm, positioning and communication on two group rides, one from Hull into the East Yorkshire countryside and one in London. External (including motor traffic flow and route type) and internal (including group composition and experience) factors shape the relationship between the riders and their ride, and hence the mobile places that they co-create. The article argues that cyclists riding in groups create distinctively flexible social spaces. These group cycling practices variously challenge, mimic and adapt to the motorized orientation of much road space.

[1]  Justin Spinney,et al.  Cycling the city: non-place and the sensory construction of meaning in a mobile practice , 2007 .

[2]  J. Wickham.  PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEMS: THE SINEWS OF EUROPEAN URBAN CITIZENSHIP? , 2006 .

[3]  Susan Hanson,et al.  Critical mass: forging a politics of sustainable mobility in the information age , 2001 .

[4]  Peter E. S. Freund,et al.  Hyperautomobility, the Social Organization of Space, and Health , 2007 .

[5]  M. Paterson.  Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy , 2007 .

[6]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel , 2008 .

[7]  J. Spinney.  Cycling the City: Movement, Meaning and Method , 2009 .

[8]  Rachel Aldred,et al.  Incompetent or Too Competent? Negotiating Everyday Cycling Identities in a Motor Dominated Society , 2013 .

[9]  Zachary M. Furness,et al.  One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility , 2010 .

[10]  Phil Jones,et al.  Performing the city: a body and a bicycle take on Birmingham, UK , 2005 .

[11]  Tim Edensor.  Introduction: thinking about rhythm and space , 2010 .

[12]  J. Spinney.  Improvising rhythms: re-reading urban time and space through everyday practices of cycling , 2010 .

[13]  Zach Furness.  Critical Mass, Urban Space and Vélomobility , 2007 .

[14]  Hugh Dauncey,et al.  French cycling heroes of the tour: Winners and losers , 2003 .

[15]  Carolyne Ali Khan.  Go Play in Traffic Skating, Gender, and Urban Context , 2009 .

[16]  Simon Sheikh.  The Production of Space , 1996 .

[17]  J. Barker.  ‘Driven to Distraction?’: Children's Experiences of Car Travel , 2009 .

[18]  D. Gartman,et al.  Three Ages of the Automobile , 2004 .

[19]  Rob Shields,et al.  Lefebvre, Love and Struggle: Spatial Dialectics , 1999 .

[20]  Dave Horton,et al.  Environmentalism and the bicycle , 2006 .

[21]  Trent Brown,et al.  Real Cyclists Don't Race , 2007 .

[22]  B. Fincham.  Balance is Everything: Bicycle Messengers, Work and Leisure , 2008 .

[23]  Rachel Aldred,et al.  ‘On the outside’: constructing cycling citizenship , 2010 .