Politics & Urban planning

I grew up riding loops around my housing estate. Often we'd play bike tag, sometimes we'd see who could pop the longest wheelie down the street, but most of all it’d be cycling from one friend’s house to the next, dumping bikes on the front lawn before stocking up on fizzy drinks and cake.

In October 2009 the track for the Rio Olympics 2016 began. Seven years to prepare the house for the party!

The US is a country synonymous with the car. This vast land and its people embraced car culture like no other. Is the bicycle a valid form of transportation in such an environment? Has the US reached a turning point? If so, what changes are being made to encourage people onto two wheels?

Manchester has made an enormous contribution to UK cycling over the last couple of decades. The city’s velodrome was built in 1994, ready for the Commonwealth games of 2002. Known as the National Cycling Centre and home to British Cycling, it ensured the arrival of an unprecedented era of success in cycle sport.

Germany: The RS1 bike highway in the Ruhr Metropolitan Region has become a showcase project for bike path infrastructure. The final expansion phase will connect ten major towns, around 60 large enterprise locations and a total of four universities over an area of 101 km, from Duisburg to Dortmund and then onto Hamm.

In 2014, the London Royal Borough of Kingston was one of three local authorities which bid for and won a share of £100million worth of funding to put towards a raft of improvements to cycling and transport infrastructure.

Every effort has it's rewards. A city of about 250.000 inhabitants achieves surprisingly positive numbers promoting the use of the bicycle as daily means of transport.

Andrew Gilligan is London’s first Cycling Commissioner. His boss is Mayor Boris Johnson and together they attempt to transform the British capital into a cycle-friendly one. Not an easy task with cyclists’ deaths being blown-up in the media, and multiple stakeholders wanting their say in any infrastructural measure. A network of so-called Cycle Superhighways is in the making and being improved following heavy criticism, while quiet roads that lead cyclists away from busy streets are being mapped. Our London correspondent Nora Manthey spoke to the Cycling Commissioner about the challenges of change , segregation, gender issues, cycle safety in perception and reality, and the non-sense of cycle paths in Underground tunnels.

Space, energy and time – the most precious resources in urban mobility. Which modes of transportation is most efficient in these categories? A comparison.