World Cycling Alliance, under the ECF umbrella has stressed the importance of cycling and active mobility at the 2nd Preparatory Committee for the Habitat III in Nairobi. WCA also pointed out how cycling fits in all the UN Habitat goals for an equitable and prosperous sustainable city. Marcio Deslandes, Project Officer for WCA describes the details and highlights WCA's efforts.

UN Habitat/unhabitat.org/prepcom2/

Delegations from all over the world got together from the 14th the 17th of April 2015 at the UN headquarters in Gigiri, Nairobi, for the 2nd Preparatory Committee for the Habitat III, which will take place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. Member states, NGOs and other stakeholders were in Nairobi to discuss the post 2015 urban agenda to be launched at Habitat III in 2016.

The World Cycling Alliance, under the ECF umbrella was present there to stress the importance of cycling and active mobility as part of the New Urban agenda and to point out how cycling fits in all the UN Habitat goals for an equitable and prosperous sustainable city:

• A safe and healthy city;
• A resilient city;
• A productive city;
• A planned city;
• An inclusive city;
• A green city.

Citizens around the world are claiming back their streets

Streets and public places have historically played a crucial role in the social, economic, political, cultural and commercial development of cities and these are functions integral to urban life. However, for different reasons, the multi-functionality of cities have been overlooked in modern urban development and the streets and public places were conceived as just a network to enable its citizens to transit from and to different points within the cities. These aspects have narrowed the role of streets and public spaces to its movement functions forgetting all the other values attached to our streets and public places.

Focusing on the idea of streets and public places limited to areas of transit only and the post-war urban developments, streets were more and more designed for cars since they were conceived as the most efficient mode of transport and also a symbol of wealth and development in the 70's and 80’s. The car centric development changed even more the role of our streets that became unsafe places designed for cars and where active mobility has lost a lot of its space. A city designed for cars only deprived the use of the streets and public spaces to pedestrians and cyclists. Now that over 50 percent of the world’s population live in urban areas, the situation has become chaotic and urban sprawling cannot continue with the old paradigms of development. Therefore, citizens of cities around the world are claiming back their streets and public places and the UN Habitat is working to set the new paradigms of urban development towards equitable and prosperous urban spaces accessible to everyone.

In order to have better, more livable, equitable, prosperous and sustainable cities in the future, UN Habitat will launch next year the new urban agenda on the occasion of Habitat III. All the discussions during the preparatory committees are aimed at the 6 goals aforementioned above.

However, in order to understand the importance of these 6 goals we need to need to add some key expressions to the discussion. Accessibility, intermodality in modern public transport networks and the inclusion of active modes of transport are all important elements in this topic which need to be added and addressed.

A safe and healthy City

Safety is an important issue in urban development. Most cities today were designed for cars forgetting the importance of other modes of transport as cycling and walking and, consequently squeezing the latter out of its planning. A car-oriented city cannot be a safe city: there are numerous data, study - including one from the OECD - which prove that with more cyclists on the roads accident fatalities decrease because this means more awareness from motorists. However, especially in emerging countries traffic fatalities are also growing more and more with motorisation spreading and it is a general concern for governments and health systems nowadays.

On the other hand, if we opt to design a city prioritising slow traffic, creating good infrastructure to cyclists and pedestrians, our cities will turn into safer and democratic places where every group will feel safer, where kids will be able to enjoy the streets and squares, where elderly will be able to transit more comfortably and motorised vehicle fatalities will decrease bringing benefits to the health and social systems. Not to mention that a person who exercises every day, is a healthier person. I would like to point out here some facts about cities like Copenhagen, where hundreds of millions of euros are the health benefits just because of the high modal split of cycling.

Flickr/Patrick Goosseens

Resilience

Resilience has become the key word for sustainable development since it brings the idea of persevering in emergency situations and continuing its core activities adapting to the changes it was enforced upon. In this case I would like to stress two aspects of resiliency that is linked to the importance of active mobility and its efficiency facing the amount of cars in our cities today. In many cities of the world cycling is the most efficient way to get from point "A" to point "B" considering the traffic jams in big cities. It takes me 15 minutes to cycle to work. If I decide to commute by car, it will never take me less than 40 minutes because of traffic jams.

The traffic in cities nowadays have become a state of emergency and intermodal transport systems, active mobility can be one of the solutions and reduce the economic loss, lower growth caused by traffic jams. The second point is the climate change issues. If we all use cars to commute, the quality of the air in the world will make our planet unlivable sooner or later.

A productive city

There is one main aspect of the bicycle as being a tool to a productive city that is already widely used in many countries. The bicycle is the quickest and most efficient way for deliveries in short distance. Not to mention the great use of cargo bikes. Therefore, bicycle deliveries are a source of jobs in different countries, especially in the global south for its efficiency and low cost.

Another productive aspect of slow traffic is the commercial benefits of local retailers. When one is cycling or walking, one has more time to window-shop and more chances to stop and purchase things from retailers. Last but not least, more people cycling demands more bicycle from industries, creating more jobs, as the ECF's Cycling for growth study showed: with the doubling of cycling modal share by 2020 there will be 1 million jobs in the EU connected to cycling.

A planned city

A well planned city is a city designed for people where all different layers of society can move and feel safe in it. It is a more compact city where public transport and active mobility are given priority and distances are easily covered by the use of an intermodal transport; a city where cycling and walking are integrated to the transport system of the city. Therefore the importance of considering the bicycle as an important tool for transportation.

Flickr/Blende57

An inclusive city

Cycling and walking are the cheapest way to move around a city. Access of public transportation can be also an issue for every person, mostly in emerging countries. In this tone, active mobility is a great tool to include all societal layers in the city economy. For its lower costs, through active mobility, people can more effectively take part on a city life. Through cycling, kids can get to school more efficiently in a lower cost, employees can get to work quicker. Consequently, it provides a better quality of life for all layers of societies and include everyone in the activities of the city. It is worth mentioning here that a big part of population nowadays still walk hours to reach work and schools. If cycling is given the right place, life of millions of people can be improved. 

A green city

A green city is a city promoting sustainable ways of development with less CO2 emissions. Here, we should mention the important of mass transportation in modern life. Looking at it in a global perspective, very few cities have low carbon transportation in place, especially in emerging countries. Active mobility is the means to move around emitting less CO2. I will dare to say here that cycling is the most efficient mode of transport.

For the reasons mentioned above, World Cycling Alliance is working hard to introduce cycling in the working papers and documents of the new urban agenda to be launched during Habitat III next year. Last year, ECF and World Cycling Alliance signed an MOU with UN Habitat and became a partner of the World Urban Campaign during the World Urban Forum 7 in Medellin.

A cycling friendly city is a more livable, safe, equitable, inclusive, healthy, resilient, productive and prosperous city.

About the author

Marcio Deslandes is ECF's World Cycling Alliance Project Officer and Velo-city Series Manager. Previously he has worked as a Product Manager in London, UK for a few years and as an Event Manager in Brussels for the last two years.