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Ordering Urban Disorder
Cycling Safely Through Amsterdam
Intersections
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Graduate School of Social Sciences Master Thesis Urban Sociology First supervisor: Dr. Olga Sezneva Second supervisor: Dr. Walter Nicholls By: Mehdi Comeau
Student number: 10635041 Submission date: 30 June 2014
Abstract
Cities throb with movement, as mobile people provide the pulse of daily urban life. In this movement, trams, autos, scooters, bicycles and pedestrians must navigate safe and orderly motion. This paper examines how cycling lends order to a mobile urban
landscape of seeming disorder. Cycling is chosen because it expresses high informality and rule-‐bending behavior in traffic, which defies formal traffic regulations designed to organize space and human behavior; yet, safety and order remain. Safety as accident-‐free movement is used as a more precise measure to address a broader understanding of urban order. The city of focus is Amsterdam, where a significant proportion of daily mobility is on a bicycle. Intersections are used as a form of
breaching experiment to examine order because they present heightened intensity and complexity of use that threaten safety and order, making intricacies of how cycling overcomes these threats analytically available. Data stems from the University of Amsterdam’s Crossings Project research on 10 major intersections, commissioned by the Municipality of Amsterdam. It is concluded that safety is achieved and order maintained through reasoned and responsible informal practices, requiring embodied knowledge and skill situated in communal practice, unique use of formal and informal rules, sensorial attention and orientation towards others and the spatial environment. This paper opens doors to further research building on social and spatial implications of urban cycling, and contributes to a foundation for researching what the bicycle as a mobile technology signifies in urban society.
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 2
Table of Contents ... 4
I. Introduction ... 6
II. Literature Review ... 9
2.1 Contextualization ... 11
2.2 Habitus as Situated Cycling Knowledge Embodied in Practice ... 14
2.3 Street Rules and Interaction ... 18
2.4 Space: Abstract and Social ... 19
2.5 Place: The Three Dimensions ... 21
2.6 Mobilities ... 22
III. Methodology ... 25
3.1 Purpose of Study ... 25
3.2 Operationalization ... 26
3.2.1 Situated and Embodied Knowledge ... 26
3.2.2 Informal Rules of Street Interactions ... 27
3.2.3 Space and Place ... 28
3.3 Research Design ... 29
3.4 Study Population and Sampling ... 31
3.5 Data Collection and analysis ... 31
3.5.1 Video and Observations ... 32
3.5.2 Interviews ... 33
3.6 Limitations and Validity ... 36
IV. Results and Analysis Part I: What happens at intersections? ... 38
4.1 A Tale From the Pedals ... 38
4.2 We Ride Along ... 41
4.3 Informality Reigns and Safety Remains ... 42
V. Results and Analysis Part II: How is order kept at intersections? ... 46
5.1 Informal Knowledge and Skill ... 46
5.2 Situating Cycling Knowledge ... 52
5.4 Cyclist Practices: Reasoned and Responsible Rule Bending ... 58
5.5 Street Etiquette ... 66
5.5.1 Arm Extension and Short Cuts ... 67
5.5.2 Compromise ... 71
5.5.3 Breaking Cycling Street Etiquette ... 73
5.6 Street Wisdom ... 75
5.7 The ‘Law of the Mind’ and the ‘Perfect Citizen’: Cycling-‐Centric Conventions ... 79
VI. Conclusion ... 82
Acknowledgements ... 87
References ... 88
Appendix ... 93
Appendix A: Initial video analysis noting informal routes and behavior ... 93
Appendix B: Example Video Observation Notes: Situational acts of wisdom ... 94
Appendix C: Desire line counting reference: Frederiksplein crossing ... 97
Appendix D: City of Amsterdam bicycle network ... 98
Riding a bike, you are agile, able to make calculated maneuvers in spontaneous circumstances; your body and face are exposed, integrated in your built and social environment; you communicate informally, as you see another cyclist turn a corner coming toward you, you lean subtly left to signal your direction and with a split-‐ second glance at their eyes, the other acknowledges and veers just to your side; you are aware of others; others are aware of you; your actions are communal and collective; your actions are private and individual; you consciously cycle; you unconsciously cycle; you think and decide; you decide without thinking; your movements are natural; your mind is thinking; your body is performing; you dip on and off the sidewalk, avoiding autos and obstacles, squeezing through traffic and slipping through red lights; you do what autos do; you do what autos do not, and at times, what autos cannot; you see chaos in traffic; you find order in chaos; you conform to formal traffic rules; you have your own set of rules; you are a cyclist.
Such subtleties signify the trivialization of cycling as an elaborate practice; as such, cycling expresses a practical logic that, “like all practical logics, can only be grasped in action” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 92). In action, cycling involves the mind and body in a complex way, as knowledge and skill mingle both rational thought and tacit
knowledge in an individual, yet highly communal practice in cities. Through this embodied knowledge, it can be recognized that cycling requires an awareness of self, others and the spatial environment to calculate and intuit the myriad
consecutive, fleeting interactions and actions. Through these qualities, cycling tunes urbanites towards each other and their spatial environment, requiring observation and interpretation of other’s actions and materialities, and some form of social interaction to reach agreements in motion that best overcome potential hindrance and accidents – ultimately, that achieve order.
This paper seeks to explain how cycling orders the urban. What this means is that in multi-‐use, mobile urban landscapes, seeming disorder finds some form of order; as streets full of pedestrians, autos, scooters, horses, pigeons, lights, buttons, sounds and spatial designs, something happens between cyclists and the urban that defies disorder. To gain an analytical lens into how cycling order the urban, intersections are chosen as research sites because they house intense activity and complexity of use, where swarms of moving bodies and metal configurations traverse by the thousands every hour, as pedestrians, cyclists, autos and trams must find agreement in motion. On this premise, I seek to explain how cycling keeps order. As order is
achieved, physical safety is secured, causing rules and orientation toward others to be vital in avoiding accidents – where accident-‐free cycling is considered safe. Here, knowledge and skill play a role in the many interesting ways rules are used and interactions are carried out during ‘negotiations in motion’ (Jensen, 2010).
To examine how the urban is ordered through cycling, I take two phenomena – cycling and urban space, and set parameters to examine what happens between them. The parameters are order and safety; as urban order is more broad and theoretical, safety is used as a specified frame to address order. In this case, understanding how cyclists maintain safety is a window into how the urban is ordered. In this sense, order and safety are rather synonymous: a safe locale is ordered; an ordered locale is safe. Therefore, this paper seeks to answer the question:
What is involved in cycling safely through an urban intersection?
To orient this question towards cycling and the ordering of urban space, two sub questions formulate the research design:
What happens at intersections?
How is order kept at intersections?
These questions set out to elevate an understanding of how the urban is ordered through a movement-‐based practice – cycling, as the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry, 2006) has emerged to examine social implications of an increasingly mobile world. One meaning of this is that if people are mobile, they connect to each other in new ways – as opposed to old geography research rooted in static studies; thus, the mobile practice of cycling contributes to problems of the mobilities paradigm. In this mobile light, little is known about how technologies such as the bicycle order and affect the urban world. I use the bicycle as an entry point to analyze mobile implications on urbanity, where cycling is a transformative force on social and spatial urban qualities.
As a central proponent of mobilities studies, Cresswell (2006) notes that we have little knowledge of what movement means in practice. This paper draws from abstract mobilities-‐based theory and seeks to ground what movement means in practice through empirical research on cycling. Further, as literature examining how place, space and mobility are constituted in social interaction remains scant
and space through social interaction in motion. Consequentially, place and space are viewed through a mobile lens in order to draw on how cycling orders the urban.
In regards to place, Agnew (1987) theorizes place as a locale – not necessarily fixed, but also located in motion – that structures social interaction and generates
behaviors, values and attitudes. Congruent with this definition, I frame intersections as locales that structure interaction in motion. Interaction is both social and spatial: social in the orientation towards and interaction with others in embodied
communal practice, and spatial through interaction with the physical layout of the intersection itself. In this spatial sense, expert knowledge of traffic organization is related to the production of space: the intersection. Here, formal rules are spatially expressed through roads, cycle paths, sidewalks, speed bumps, painted lines, raised islands, traffic lights, buttons, timers and the like. In this case, formal expressions not only organize and structure space, but also organize and structure human
behavior and social interaction. In this sense, how cycling orders the urban becomes a question of how cyclists negotiate social and spatial mobile interactions to form orderly movement.
I address this problematic by using personal experiences of cycling as a departure point that gains analytical traction for deeper analysis. Accordingly, results and analysis begin with autoethnographical accounts depicting what happens at intersections. From there, theory is grounded in empirical data by examining how embodied knowledge and skill, use of rules and social and spatial interactions at intersections contribute to ordering the urban. Before addressing results and analysis, the introduction is followed by a literature review and methodology section in order to prepare for a better understanding of the data. In the literature review I theoretically frame this study and in the methodology I present my research design.
II. Literature Review
Cycling and society has been increasingly studied (see Horton et al., 2007). This paper strays from common urban cycling literature concentrated on prevalent pro-‐ cycling arguments addressing areas such as health, energy, economics and the environment. These topics induce much attention, leading Jones and Burwood (2011) to argue studies on environment and health mask the intense personal experiences of cycling. Jones and Burwood (2011) are not alone in their concern, as more scholars have begun research focused on cycling and the embodiment of practice (i.e., Brown, 2010; Jones, 2005, 2012; Jones and Burwood, 2011; Spinney, 2006, 2007, 2009; Wood, 2010). As new theories and methods are arising in efforts to better understand cycling and society, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers and disciplines spanning social sciences and humanities “have gone mobile”
(Cresswell and Merriman, 2011). This study ‘goes mobile’. It begins with a focus on the embodied practice of cycling drawn from personal experience. This sets the stage for better understanding abstract theory grounded in empirical cycling data. ‘Going mobile’ means that this study seeks to address social implications of an increasingly mobile world (Sheller and Urry, 2006) alongside scholars of the mobilities paradigm in the social sciences (i.e., Adey, 2006, 2009; Cresswell, 2006, 2010; Kaufmann, 2002; Sheller and Urry, 2003; Urry, 2000). This study focuses on the bicycle as a mobile technology ordering the urban. As Cresswell and Merriman (2009) note, “[m]obility is practiced, and practice is often conflated with mobility. To move is to do something. Moving involves making a choice within, or despite, the constraints of society and geography” (p. 5). Further, at its base, movement is
essential to being human (Cresswell, 2004). Cycling is utilized in this study because it is a movement-‐based urban practice influenced by, and with implications on society and geography, where choices, behavior and actions combine to engage urbanites in ordering the urban. The question this paper addresses is how this order is achieved in practice: What is involved in cycling safely through an intersection? I address this question in an effort to explain how the urban is ordered. I look at what is involved in cycling safely through urban intersections because absence of
accidents requires an orderly flow of motion.
Theory is applied to elevate an understanding of the social implications of
movement-‐based practice on urban ordering. This paragraph explains the structure of the literature review and why certain theories are used. First, a contextualization gives context to cycling in Amsterdam, because I argue cycling in Amsterdam is ‘situated’ – meaning sociocultural norms, institutional planning and everyday practices revolve around cycling in a certain manner in this city. The ways in which
this unfolds lends to Amsterdam’s urban order. Then, theory on situated knowledge is used to link cycling as a practice to the context of Amsterdam. Inherent in this knowledge situated in communal practice, I argue embodied knowledge and skill are integrated in the practice of cycling. I then look at how this contextualized knowledge in practice is present in rules and interactions, where theory on street rules and interaction is used as an analytical angle to explain order within
Amsterdam’s context and a cycling knowledge embodied in practice. The ways in which cyclists interpret rules and interact are also products of social and spatial influence. Therefore, theory on space is used to delineate formal and informal rules in a spatial and social sense because space – e.g. traffic lights, painted lanes,
sidewalks, bike lanes – and social use of space – e.g. social norms of behavior, interactions, knowledge in practice – affect how the urban is ordered. I then
introduce place theory to argue places, such as intersections, can be interpreted as mobile locales that structure social interaction and behavioral norms to influence ways in which situated cycling knowledge embodied in practice in Amsterdam, through use of rules and interactions, orders the urban. Together, this study contributes to mobilities theory by focusing on ordering of the urban in a
movement-‐based practice, where abstract theory surrounding social implications of movement in the urban finds grounding in research on cycling.
This paragraph introduces specific theories used to expound the last paragraph’s intentions. Several theoretical components serve as constituent pieces of the puzzle; without one, the puzzle is incomplete. Following the contextualization, knowledge situated in communal practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) is examined to identify and understand cycling in Amsterdam as a community of practice (ibid., 1991), or distinctive ecology of behavioral presence in urban public space (Amin, 2012) characterized by an informal, social component. In order to understand cycling’s situated knowledge as it combines with skill and interaction, theory on the logic of practice (Bourdieu, 1990) is applied. Next, I examine the use of rules to explain ways in which cyclists informally interact with each other, framed by the theoretical lens of street etiquette and street wisdom (Anderson, 1990). Following, I address theory of space in abstract and social form (Aalbers, 2014, Lefebvre, 1991) to better
understand formal traffic regulations as spatial expressions (intersections) cyclists interact with. Literature on place is then examined to frame intersections as locales that structure social interaction (Agnew, 1987). Finally, the literature review closes with further insight into the mobilities paradigm of the social sciences (i.e.,
Cresswell, 2001; Sheller and Urry, 2003, Urry, 2007) to situate this study’s approach to a mobile phenomenon.
2.1 Contextualization
“’Context’ is the urbanist’s equivalent to the biologist’s term ‘habitat.’ Both refer to the ensemble of organisms sharing a physical space.”
– Richard Sennett, The Public Realm
The “arguments pro-‐cycling are overwhelming: it is sustainable, healthy, has zero emissions of everything, is silent and clean, cheap both in purchase as in providing infrastructure, is space and traffic efficient, enhances urban traffic circulation and provides more livability to residential areas” (FietsBeraad, 2009, pp. 19-‐21), states the FietsBeraad, Center of Expertise on Bicycle Policy in the Netherlands and founding partner of the Dutch Cycling Embassy. As a national actor, this quote highlights the Netherlands’ attitude towards cycling. In Amsterdam, local
government also believes “the use of bicycles is an enormous contribution to a city’s appeal” (City of Amsterdam long-‐term bicycle plan 2012-‐2016). In light of these propitious benefits, the ‘cycling city’ of Amsterdam sees itself in a transitional phase, with plans to invest approximately 200 million Euros through year 2040 in cycling infrastructure to accommodate an expected rise in cyclists (City of Amsterdam long-‐ term bicycle plan 2012-‐2016).
Tied to infrastructure, developing good ‘bicycle policy’ is also a priority. Ria Hilhorst, Cycling Policy Advisor, Amsterdam Department of Traffic and Transport, said in an interview that policy revolves around safety, developing and improving a growing network and parking that facilitate comfortable cycling in the city. In order to advance these aims and stimulate cycling use locally, the Netherlands has a strongly decentralized bike policy system compared to other European countries
(FietsBeraad, 2009, p. 33). This enables, on the one hand, municipalities such as Amsterdam to take locally tailored approaches to policy and infrastructure, while on the other hand, municipalities must work within national regulatory traffic
guidelines. In this sense, as Ms. Hilhorst remarks, there are “national laws, national rules for how to behave in traffic, and it’s not different in Amsterdam than in other places in the Netherlands.” For instance, Ms. Hilhorst notes, “When you come from the right, you are the one who has priority – that’s a general rule in all of traffic in the Netherlands”. How then, within the national regulatory guidelines, do expert actors generate formal traffic rules in Amsterdam, and how might they affect behavior?
“The cyclist is very important in Amsterdam, and we think at the municipality, or city council, find it very important that there are as much cyclists as possible”
to cycling’s role in alleviating mobility challenges, as she continues to say “the cyclist is the solution for this problem of the city”. Beyond accessibility, Ms. Hilhorst notes cycling reduces congestion, pollution and noise while being a healthy everyday activity, saying, “it keeps the city livable”. Not to mention cycling as part of politics and lifestyle is embedded in Amsterdammers from a young age, as Ms. Hilhorst comments, “In Amsterdam it doesn’t matter which political corner you are in because they all see the importance of the bicycle; it has so many advantages. And everyone cycles, which is also a difference with the Dutch, because you learn young to cycle as a child and you almost always cycle”. In this light, it can be seen that cycling is a potent part of the city. Cycling itself, however, is not an isolated practice, traffic experts also shape regulations that structure spatial and social aspects of cycling.
In Amsterdam, the municipality generates policy and infrastructure that is in accord with formal regulations of how to behave in traffic, yet the municipality cannot enforce these rules. Ms. Hilhorst makes this clear when she says, “the police have to maintain. That’s how things are organized in this country.” In regards to the
relationship between rule makers and enforcement, Ms. Hilhorst describes the Netherlands’ operational organization as a three-‐point forum between the Mayor, Chief of Police and Chief of Justice. Therefore, the Mayor of Amsterdam, for instance, leads a discussion highlighting central issues of concern, cycling or otherwise, and through discussion and debate it is decided what and to what degree enforcement will focus on.
Refocusing on cycling, education of formal traffic rules is of high priority. Traffic education is different in Amsterdam than other cities because cycling in practice and the system of daily mobility is different; that is to say, behavior is different due to Amsterdam’s context. Ms. Hilhorst comments that every autumn there is an awareness campaign for having lights on bicycles to keep cyclists safe from motorists. More significantly, Ms. Hilhorst emphasizes the educational focus on children, shares an expression that communicates why: “When you learn young, you behave (when you are) older” (English translation). Starting in primary school, Dutch children almost everywhere in the Netherlands go through a traffic education program where they learn to behave safely in traffic when both walking and cycling to school. At the end, there is an exam on all the rules. For the children who cycle well, children are also assessed on a cycling exam. Ms. Hilhorst notes that
Amsterdam has special programs tailored to the level of overall heightened intensity of busy traffic and danger in the city. This behavioral danger is believed to be part of the nature of the big city, where cyclists are more assertive. Due to strong
UvA to conduct research into the practice and perception of cyclists. In regards to this research, Ms. Hilhorst comments that she finds it quite important, hoping that learning about behavior and cyclist’s perceptions will reveal insight into the ways in which and why cyclists behave as they do. With this information, she then hopes to be able to translate it into new policies and even reconstructed areas that increase safety for all forms of mobility by making rules that are easier and more natural to follow for cyclists.
In honor of Amsterdam’s unique cycling culture and capabilities, Steven Fleming, author of Cycle Space: Architecture and Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle, came from his home country of Australia to guest lecture at Pakhuis de Zwijger’s,
Amsterdam’s creativity and innovation hub, Pakhuis de Zwijger, event on 14th of
April 2014. Fleming was accompanied by cycling scholars Lucas Harms and Marco te Brömmelstroet of UvA (also involved in the Crossings Project), Marc van
Woudenberg, ‘international bicycle ambassador and urban mobility consultant’ running the cycling website Amsterdamize, and Pete Jordan, author of De
Fietsrepubliek, or in English, In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist. In the context of designing cities for cycling instead of cars, Fleming spoke about reframing the rules and lifestyles people follow. While Fleming comes from
Australia and Amsterdam is more acclimatized to cycling in both rules and lifestyles, it is important to note the trend in thinking because it lays emphasis on
Amsterdam’s unique context. Particular to Amsterdam, Jordan, as an American expat, notes that in America he finds rule breaking to be enforced similarly to automobiles, with strict enforcement and legal penalties, as opposed to Amsterdam, where more leniencies are granted. Regarding what is normal or conventional in regards to the urban and cycling, Jordan noted that talks of cycling today mirror those from the 1920s in areas such as the belief that cyclists are all rude, run red lights and break rules. This is not to say there has not been change; however, as van Woudenberg noted that from 1970-‐1975 cycling in Amsterdam dropped by 75%. At this time, even some of the Dutch are quoted pro car, sharing views with most of the world that roads are for cars – not bicycles. This informs te Brommelstroet’s notion that Cycling could still lose dominance in Amsterdam if careful attention is not made to, for instance, more sensitive and subjective issues of safety that render comfort and the choice to choose the bicycle on a daily basis. These factors are requisite for orderly cycling.
Cycling returned to dominance post 1975, after raised congestion, pollution,
increased auto-‐induced child deaths and the international oil crisis triggered social unrest and political action to bolster cycling. Harms pointed out that the cycle share in the Netherlands has actually remained rather stagnant since cycling’s prominent
return – at 25% in 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2010, while jumping to 27% in 2012. Harms used this data to further advance the notion that cycling is more complicated than generally understood, where many differences within these statistics, such as social and spatial factors, influence the dynamics of cycling. With this information, it becomes clear that cycling in Amsterdam is indeed unique and tied to a number of social and spatial implications calling for attention in the social sciences.
In light of this context, I begin to show how Amsterdam is unique in regards to cycling in practice, interactions and rules. I have discussed formal rules and varied intricacies and considerations of cycling, only touching on an essential component to cycling in Amsterdam: informality. For instance, there seems to exist an informal, sociocultural knowledge of kinesthetic awareness and subtle gestures learned through collective, everyday communal cycling. This paper emphasizes the role of such informalities, with formal traffic regulations serving as a foundational
backdrop. The next section addresses how Amsterdam’s context affects knowledge situated in embodied practice.
2.2 Habitus as Situated Cycling Knowledge Embodied in Practice
“‘Situated’…does not imply that something is concrete and particular, or that it is not generalizable, or not imaginary. It implies that a given social practice is multiply interconnected with other aspects of ongoing social processes in activity systems at
many levels of particularity and generality.” – Jean Lave, 1991, p. 84
This section begins with a discussion of habitus because in this paper I argue that cycling knowledge is ‘situated’ in Amsterdam, or in other words, that cycling in practice in Amsterdam is something specific to the city’s context. Therefore, theory on habitus lends to understanding how a practice is particular to a culture or
context. This argument contributes to answering the research question because I am analyzing empirical data on cycling in practice in Amsterdam to reveal how these practices order the urban; therefore, understanding the social, cultural and contextual factors contributing to shaping these practices is essential in
understanding data and making a valid argument. Theory on embodied knowledge and the logic of practice are incorporated because I argue ‘situated’ knowledge in practice requires embodied knowledge and skill.
What is habitus? “’Habitus’–derived from ‘habit’–refers to learned practices and standards that have become so much part of ourselves that they feel self-‐evident
and natural. Habitus is our culturally-‐ and socially-‐shaped ‘second nature’” (Kuipers, 2012, p. 20). Wacquant (2011, p. 85) quotes Bourdieu ([1980] 1990, p. 91F) to give an expanded notion of habitus that helps us understand how it plays into the individual and collective practice of cycling:
“As the product of history, habitus produces individual and collective practices, and thus history, in accordance with the schemata engendered by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemata of thought and action, tend, more surely than all formal rules and all explicit norms, to guarantee the conformity of practices and their constancy across time.”
Here, Bourdieu ([1980] 1990) illuminates the nature of habitus as practice, as situated in culture, thought and action and harnessing an informal conformity within practice. In this way, “[t]he relation to the body is a fundamental dimension of the habitus” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 72, emphasis original).
Wacquant (2011) highlights three points that help bring light to situated cycling knowledge as a particular habitus in practice. First, in the context of Wacquant’s (2011) study on boxing, “habitus is a set acquired dispositions, and no one is born a boxer” (p. 85, emphasis original). This point is rather straightforward and
transferable: nobody is born a cyclist: cycling requires learning and practice. While the basics of cycling may be easy enough for a human to grasp (and less rigorous than the training involved in boxing), the complexities ensuing in urban cycling, as explored thus far, are not as easy to master: anyone can throw a punch, but not everyone can be a boxer; nearly anyone can ride a bike, not everyone can make their way through Amsterdam traffic. “Second, habitus holds that practical mastery
operates beneath the level of consciousness and discourse” (ibid., p. 86, emphasis original). Here I touch on aspects of knowledge and skill as a mind and body
interrelationship, where in any ‘practical mastery’, much of what we know and do is beneath consciousness, embedded in instinct and trained, routinized practice that seems natural in doing; it becomes “second nature” (Kuipers, 2012, p. 20). Knowing and doing both become conscious and unconscious. While it may be true that, “[t]hrough repeated practice, skills become compiled or routinized” (Wilson and Myers, 1999, p. 64), but it is also true that “[s]kill development depends on how repetition is organized” (Sennett, 2008, p. 38). In this sense, whether boxing or cycling, ‘practical mastery’ is shaped by how one practices. I argue that how one practices cycling in one city varies, to varied degrees, from other cities. For instance, cyclists in Amsterdam practice different than those in Copenhagen, Boulder,
Colorado, or Portland, Oregon. This shows that different urban contexts and social norms define everyday cycling practices and associated behavioral patterns; cycling
is ‘situated’. “Third, habitus indicates that sets of dispositions vary by social location and trajectory: individuals with different life experiences will have gained varied ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Wacquant, 2011, p. 86). Similar to the last point, I make this point to highlight yet another fashion that habitus as a practice can become specific to, or situated in, social and cultural contexts. I make the point because my argument of keeping order at intersections is tightly bound to the fact that habitus, as particular knowledge and skill, use of rules and interactions in practice, contributes to keeping order.
Kuipers (2012) argues there is a Dutch national cycling habitus. I argue this habitus is different, to varied degrees, from city to city and town to town. In this way, I argue that cycling knowledge is ‘sitauted’.
As cycling is a public display of collective life, it is also a display of collective knowledge in communal practice. I argue this knowledge is not universal, but specific, or situated, in Amsterdam’s context. That is to say, there is knowledge in cycling, or a ‘cycling knowledge’, that orders cycling and is a product of social and spatial context. In the past, knowledge has been understood as a product that is transferred from teacher to student, separating knowing from doing. What this understanding fails to incorporate is “cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity”, where “knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used” (Brown et al., 1989, p. 32). A leading proponent of this form of sociocultural learning, Lave (1988) emphasizes the dialectic nature of an active, dynamic cognition that changes as a result of a dialectic relationship between individual actions and their situated context. This contributed to leading to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) pioneering exploration of the concept of community of practice in terms of situated learning and knowing, stemming from “relationships between people, activities and the world” (p. 98). Wenger (2010) applies situated knowledge to the concept of community of practice, which “can be viewed as a simple social system” (p. 179) producing knowledge through the relationship between a social actor and their social world. It is a knowing in doing. As Bourdieu (1990) states in The Logic of Practice, “[w]hat is ‘learned by body’ is not something that one has, like knowledge, that can be
brandished, but something that one is” (p. 73). This embodied knowledge is situated in practice, where “[p]ractice has a logic which is not that of the logician” (ibid., p. 86), but rather “like all practical logics, [has a logic that] can only be grasped in action” (ibid., p. 92). Therefore, cycling benefits from being understood in a
sociocultural setting, where practice can be observed to reflect knowledge and skill, use of rules and interactions embedded in practice. Herein lies the foundation to understanding cycling and cyclist’s behavior as a manifestation of an active,
dynamic situated knowledge embodied in the illogical logic of a communal urban practice in movement.
Amin (2012) sheds theoretical light on the complexities of situated knowledge in his exploration of communities of practice and situated learning and knowing, which builds on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) pioneering research into communities of practice focused on organizational work in the 1980s. Amin (2012) applies this approach to examine knowledge generation and communal doing in the context of an urban politics of difference among strangers in plural public space. In so doing, Amin (2012) refers to displays of collective life in public spaces that fuse “the extraordinary and the ordinary in the lived experience of space” (p. 73). The act of cycling is such a display, where “[k]nowing emerges as a useful and tangible output of engagement, the know-‐how of both the individual and the group is put on
display” and “[i]ndividuals learn to become knowledgeable partners”, where
“shared practice strengthens and enriches the knowledge chain” (ibid., p. 40). Amin (2012) recognizes that that much of this knowing is precognitive. In this sense, engrained and situated cycling knowledge in Amsterdam is ordinary in that it is rather automatic and unconscious, often taken for granted by users, and for this very reason, it is also extraordinary and sociologically interesting to examine behavior in this mobile context. What’s more is Amin’s (2012, p. 71) linkage of practice to the particularity and plurality of public spaces:
“The pluralism and vitality of an open space of gathering, its
functional and symbolic order, its material arrangements, its many temporalities and spatial flows, and its proliferation of variety, trace a distinctive ecology of presence, one that is full of the surprises and novelties of unplanned interaction between disparate bodies and things, but also made legible and stable by the repetitions of habit and the rules and regulations of order and orientation.”
Reverberating sharply with notions of cycling and behavior, this quote begins to set the theoretical frame of the plurality of formal and informal rules in relation to greater spatialities, where “the resonances of the busy street, frequented by the many and open to changing uses and occupants, may be described as controlled plentitude, sensed by subjects as being in a space of possibility” (ibid., p. 72). Cycling takes place within public spaces that are “patterned ground, with human movement and judgement steered by habit, purposeful intent, and the instructions of
assembled technologies, rules, signs and symbols” (ibid, p. 72). In this sense, there is a significant spatial influence to behavior, tied to the informalities of judgement, habit and intent, and the formalities of regulations. With this understanding of
situated knowledge and embodied practice, I now turn to look at the use of formal and informal rules.
2.3 Street Rules and Interaction
I have argued Amsterdam’s cycling context renders a particular cycling knowledge embodied in practice because these factors contribute to understanding cycling as a mobile practice, and in turn, how the urban is ordered. In the contextualization, I have touched on the notion that Amsterdam cycling is unique in regards to rules. In this sociocultural context, I argue Amsterdam cycling is a unique product of informal and formal rules and social and spatial negotiations. In everyday practice, informal rules emerge alongside formal traffic regulations. In looking at street rules and interaction, emphasis is laid on informality.
In this sense, cycling knowledge that manifests in unwritten, informal rules and tacit knowledge embodied in practice finds expression in what Anderson (1990) calls street etiquette and street wisdom. By definition, etiquette represents conventional but unwritten codes of practice particular to a group, concerning what is proper or acceptable behavior in social life. Taking etiquette to the streets, Anderson (1990) refers to street etiquette as “[a] set of informal rules [that] has emerged among residents and other users of the public spaces of the Village” (p. 334). Anderson looks at a particular ‘Village’ and, primarily, racial conflicts on the street. This paper looks at cycling etiquette, which similarly has informal rules that have emerged among cyclists in practice. Further, in both cases street etiquette allows “members of diverse groups orderly passage with the promise of security, or at least a
minimum of trouble and conflict” (ibid., p. 334). In this sense, street etiquette is rather ‘bulky’, providing baseline rules of conduct and behavior that ensure safety; however, “street etiquette is only a guide for assessing behavior in public” (ibid., p. 348), where those “who go beyond the simplistic rules of street etiquette develop a kind of ‘street wisdom’” (ibid., p. 334).
Street wisdom is therefore most effective “[o]nce the basic rules of etiquette are mastered and internalized” and “people can use their observations and experiences to gain insight” (ibid., p. 348). Anderson (1990) refers to this interpretive, self-‐ conscious process rendering a sensitive observer as ‘field research’ where street participants achieve “the wisdom that every public trial is unique”, resulting in “a continuing set of assessments of, or even guesses about, fellow users”, where “[t]he streetwise individual thus becomes interested in a host of signs, emblems, and symbols that others exhibit in everyday life” (p. 348). By achieving this wise
capability of assessing each unique situation in response to the subtle informalities of street behavior and each particular street user, the streetwise also render a safer and more manageable local environment (ibid., p. 349). Being streetwise “makes people likely to be alert and sensitive to the nuances of the environment”, as “they understand how to negotiate the streets” and “have learned how to behave
effectively in public” (ibid., p. 350). In this way, “the streetwise person is both wary of others and sensitive to the subtleties that could salvage safety out of danger” (ibid., p. 350). Anderson (1990) compares wisdom and etiquette to a scalpel and hatchet – one can cut fine lines, the other only broad strokes (p. 348). Wisdom, the scalpel, is sharper and more agile, maneuverable and in tune with the immediate happenings of everyday life.
Following the arguments of street etiquette and street wisdom, approaching cycling through this theoretical frame enables me to better portray how empirical data on cyclist’s behavior manages to find safety and order at intersections in regards to situated knowledge and skill, use of rules and interactions both social and spatial. The next section frames relevant social and spatial theories of space.
2.4 Space: Abstract and Social
Generally speaking, space is ambiguous and commonly denotes a greater field of spatial reference; however, space is more theoretically intricate and varied. This paper resonates with interpretations of space as being abstract and social (Aalbers, 2014; Lefebvre, 1991) to delineate between formal and informal rules and spatial and social influences on cycling in practice. In turn, theoretical understandings of space are important to understanding urban order because cycling happens in space, where social and material influences dialectically compose the practice and order, or disorder, of cycling.
First things first, it ought to be recognized that “the term ‘social space’ has become so murky with multiple and often incompatible meanings” (Soja, 1980, p. 210) that it demands clarification. Simply put, it is believed that “all organized space will be seen as rooted in social origin and filled with social meaning” (Soja, 1980, p. 210). Social space can be interpreted as informal and user-‐related, while abstract space can be interpreted as formal and expert-‐related. Lefebvre (1991) expands on this notion with the argument, “[i]f space has an air of neutrality and indifference with regard to its contents and thus seems to be ‘purely’ formal, the epitome of rational abstraction, it is precisely because it has been occupied and used, and has already been the focus of past processes whose traces are not always evident on the
