Researching cycling inequalities: moving towards more sustainable cycling societies

There has been a growing interest in the practice of cycling as a central element in the configuration of a society that can be more sustainable in terms of its mobility systems. This paper suggests that in order to move towards the development of more sustainable cycling societies, we need to pay more attention to relations of inequalities that might be embedded within existing cycling practices. More specifically, drawing on Mobilities research conducted in the car-centric city of Birmingham, it aims to unpack the wider set of inequalities – for example, gender, class, ethnic, employment, economic, to name a few – that can be enacted through the practice of cycling as well as the multiple spaces of exclusion that can be produced or reinforced in relation to such inequalities. It thus suggests that understanding the inherent immobilities that might be embedded even in the most unexpected systems of mobilities, such as cycling, is pivotal for not only locating cycling in the centre of developing more sustainable societies, but also realising the centrality of the usually ignored ‘social’ in the pursuit of sustainable mobilities