Italy has one of the highest motorization rate in the world and probably because of this reason it currently hosts one of the strongest and more compact bike activist scene.
In the last few months urban cyclists painted overnight the 30 km/h limit symbol on the road of the main cities all over the country in order to request to slow motorized traffic down and 5 new bike lanes have been created by the citizens in Rome to make up for the lack of attention from local policies toward bicycle users.

The offer for liveable cities needs to match as soon as possible its demand and for this reason Verona (Italy) will host the second edition of CosmoBike Mobility, a three day long Expo-Conference dedicated to cycling as a tool to rethink urban environments. From September 14th to 16th experts on urban mobility, technicians, politicians, associations and private companies will gather in Verona to present the best practices about urban cycling from all over Europe.

The focus of the event will be “The City of Children” because today’s children are tomorrow’s adults and because if we build and plan cities safe for children, they will be safe for everybody. The event, organized by Bikenomist srl with the support of FIAB, will count on a multidisciplinary approach in order to stress the needs of proper infrastructures and policies to empower everybody’s mobility and to promote accessibility.

Paolo Pinzuti, project manager of the event and CEO of Bikenomist srl, clearly stated that

The car age is about to finish with the baby boomers generation and we need to prepare for that moment. We need is just to get rid of all those cars hindering the access to the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in the world. It’s a matter of ethics and aesthetics which should never be separated. Many Italian cities already undertook big improvements in this direction, others are following. We need to spread the vision and technical knowledge as much as possible to get quality spaces in order to step into a third millennium of urban mobility.

“It’s not a matter of bicycles, but it’s a matter of quality of spaces: 80% of the public space in Italy is made up by streets and we have to bring them back as spaces for relationships instead of just facilities for transit. Bicycles and cycling are the tools to make a proper use of quality spaces and that’s the reason why we are focusing on it so much” says Matteo Dondé, urbanist and scientific director of CosmoBike Mobility.

For more info about CosmoBike Mobility and its program, please visit www.cosmobikemobility.com/en