Inching Towards Celebrations, With You!
Newsletter | Your Monthly Updates
As we are nearing the end of the year, we are also approaching the first anniversary of our newsletter! Our effort with the newsletter is to share, inspire, and learn together with our community. We are grateful to have you as our reader and would love to hear from you!
Scholarships for Velo-city Conference 2025 in Gdansk
We are excited to announce that our scholarship call for Velo-city 2025 is open! You have until 2nd March 2025 to submit your scholarship application. Our scholarship fund was created to advance social justice and amplify the research, knowledge, and excellence of marginalized communities at international cycling conferences. The fund prioritises applicants from the Global South as well as underrepresented communities, including but not limited to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and LGBTQ+.
The scholarships will be granted to selected individuals with accepted abstracts for Velo-city 2025. The deadline to submit your abstract for Velo-city has been extended until Sunday 10 November 2024.
The scholarship fund is possible thanks to the generous support from our partners: ZICLA and PAUL LANGE. If you want to contribute and support more scholarships, get in touch with us via partnerships@urbancyclinginstitute.org.
Urban Cycling Institute is a young independent non-profit. To ensure the continuation of quality content, we need your support. Become a patron by pledging for a subscription and receiving our material:
Cycling News From Your Hometown 💌
In our last newsletter, we asked you to share a success story from your hometown. We are delighted to share the first selected one from Wellington, New Zealand, by Alex Dyer. We are very impressed by its creativity! Many thanks to Alex for this celebratory story:
Three and a half years ago our community of cycling advocates installed a popup cycleway near where I live. It was created over one weekend of volunteers getting together, but only lasted a couple of days. It was made of homemade planter boxes using pallets, and orange plastic electrical conduit for improvised 'hit sticks'.
The council removed the popup lane. But soon after they committed to an ambitious Bike Network Plan - to create 166 km of connected safe cycling facilities across the city.
The Berhampore to Newtown Project is currently under construction. You can now see, and cycle, the nearly finished section where our popup was held.
Inaugural Lecture of Prof. Meredith Glaser
We invite you to join us on November 26 in Ghent for the Inaugural Lecture of Professor Meredith Glaser. This event is hybrid, so join in person or via a livestream link. The event will be in Flemish and English. Register here.
📍 Sint-Baafshuis, Biezekapelstraat 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium / or online 🛜
🗓️ 17:00 CET on 26 November 2024
Updates from Bentonville: Research Project with City Thread
Urban Cycling Institute is currently undertaking a research project in conjunction with our partner, City Thread. The project investigates governance, capacity building, and institutional learning on cycling infrastructure and its development in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, United States. In October '24, Lilian Markfort (Research Fellow) and Dylan Power (Senior Researcher), traveled to Bentonville for a 12-day field visit to conduct interviews and workshops with local residents, stakeholders, and government officials investigating the cycling culture, progress, and development. Learn more below:
On Wednesday, 6 November, The German Municipal Cycling Conference invited Lilian for an interview to share her impressions and takeaways about cycling in the US. More information to come soon.
Throwback to Summer 2024 ☀️
In July, the 8th edition of our summer school Planning the Cycling City concluded with a public hybrid event. Students shared their key learnings and future commitments, receiving feedback and insights from our PhD fellows, who served as judges. Approximately 70 participants joined us online for this final gathering and enjoyed an exclusive Q&A session with special guests: PhD Candidate Sandra Jimena La Rota and the creators of Retazos Móviles: Textile Stories of Migrant Women's Mobility.
This August in Amsterdam was exceptionally lively: we organized six Bike Study Excursions, starting at Nieuwmarkt and ending at the Rijksmuseum. Along the way, we visited seven key innovation sites to see firsthand how the world’s leading cycling city approaches cycling and mobility: through experimentation, user-centered design, and a focus on the cycling experience. Immersive learning is a big part of our philosophy at Urban Cycling Institute, and we apply it even during our Study Visits and the Cycling Research Board Annual Meeting. If you want to join one of our Bike Study Excursions in Amsterdam, request a date here.
The Best Bike Plan is a Car Plan
Watch Meredith (minutes 52-54) in the German show Hart aber Fair on the topic of car crises - Autokrise: Eine Industrie am Ende, published by the national TV channel Das Erste. “The best bike plan is a car plan” says Meredith Glaser (in a German voice-over).
A warm welcome to our new interns: Harriet, Bethel & Karim!
Harriet’s research aims to answer how we can recycle materials to help develop cycling lanes in Nairobi. Bethel’s focus is on Veracruz and its need for varied and sustainable transportation options. Karim is dedicated to exploring the impact tactile urbanism-inspired cycling networks and infrastructure have on the mobility of blind and visually impaired people (BVIP). We are excited to have them on board and assist with the development of their ongoing work.
Join our team in the next cohort of internships!
We look forward to welcoming curious and driven individuals worldwide to our research internship program! In the 3 month internship, from January to April 2025, we encourage interdisciplinary perspectives to combine research and practice! Apply on our website where you’ll find all the necessary details.
Finally, we would also like to dive deeper and assess our impact through a short but comprehensive survey. To make things interesting, we will select three contributors and award them with a branded Urban Cycling Institute T-shirt, and a surprise bonus gift!