What is shared in shared bicycles? Mobility, space, and capital

Abstract

As sustainability has become a keyword for urban mobility, cycling and bicycles are often perceived as an inherently progressive force for a more environmentally friendly and equitable society. This article joins the growing scholarship that critically examines bicycle mobility as a socio-technical system with complex effects on urban lives. Drawing on long-term fieldwork on mobilities in the urban areas of the Pearl River Delta area in South China, this ethnography of the platform-based, bicycle-sharing programs unpacks the complex politico-economic, spatial-infrastructural, and social entanglement that has shaped this reincarnated form of pedalled mobility when China has moved away from a kingdom of bicycles to a country of cars in the past two decades. I argue that dockless bicycle-sharing programs emerged a capitalist technological fix for a socio-spatial condition produced by the process of urban transformation. Shaped by marketing strategies common in the sharing economy, bicycle-sharing companies capitalize on an ambiguous perception of public space. Yet this individualized form of mobility reproduces rather than disrupts the existing social hierarchy. This study sheds light on the importance of a socio-technical critique of the assemblage of infrastructure, capital, and technology to produce more sustainable forms of urban mobilities.

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