Assembling velomobile commons for young people in a marginalised Amsterdam neighborhood

Abstract

The polymorphous sustainability crisis demands large scale transitions in urban mobility. In many places a lot of expectation is put on urban cycling. Yet, many scholars have argued that cycling transitions tend to cater to the affluent, native, white and in other ways privileged urban areas and people. Mobility researchers have proposed mobility commoning as a key theoretical resource to account for the social justice of mobility transitions, but its practical operationalisations remain scarce. This paper focuses on cycling promotion efforts among an intersectional marginalized group that has received little attention in this research and policy context: lower-class, racialized youths in urban peripheries. The study deployed theoretical understandings from recent mobility justice/commoning literatures to create an action research study on Amsterdam cycling program's efforts to promote cycling among youths in the historically marginalized neighborhood of Bijlmer. The results highlight how even advanced cycling environments might be underpinned by intersectional mobility injustices, and how both, immature and advanced cycling cities should engage with local communities and diverse groups to assemble velomobile commons.