VÉLOVGR - “Vélover la ville” (cycle the city) (2013)

Summary:

Urban self-service bicycle sharing systems have been developing rapidly on an international scale for less than a decade, and correspond to a change in mobility, public services and contemporary urban practice. This innovation, which resembles individual public transportation, makes the user the producer of their mobility and the co-producer of the evolution of an urban innovation and a public service. Lyon was a pilot site for this new system and therefore represents a good laboratory for analysis.

The study examines the gendered dimension of practices and modes of appropriation of bike-sharing systems.

It analyses the new forms of “co-production” of sciences and public service that it implies. The project primarily relies on three interconnected disciplinary perspectives – sociology, information technology and geography – an on the use of a database of Vélo’v movements in 2011 together with specific qualitative surveys.

The Vélo’vGR project pursues several objectives:

- produce knowledge on an urban practice viewed broadly (not merely its role as a transportation instrument),

- give the Vélo'v “user” in the city a face and social depth, more particularly from the angle of female/male differences,

- examine ordinary, professional and academic knowledge/representations of Vélo'v as a public urban amenity.