From the right to mobility to the right to the mobile city: Playfulness and mobilities in Bogotá's cycling activism

Journal article

This paper takes cycling activism in Bogotá (Colombia) as a point of departure to conceptualise the right to the mobile city. Mobility is a key site of intervention for claiming the right to the city, but has so far only been considered in terms of access to the city. Such a reading obscures the ways in which mobile practices themselves can be exercises in participation, appropriation, and management of urban space. In examining biketivists’ playful mobilities, I emphasise the centrality of mobility in the production of the city. Foregrounding play as a means to assert use value over exchange value in the city allows for a non-utilitarian understanding of mobility and a reconceptualisation of the right to mobility along Lefebvrian lines. However, playful practices can also produce spaces of exclusion, and nuance is necessary to avoid totalising accounts of cycling politics.

Authors: Castañeda, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Antipode
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 58-77
• Publication date: 2019-10-31
• Acceptance date: 2019-08-13
• DOI: 10.1111/anti.12581
• EISSN: 1467-8330
• ISSN: 0066-4812
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR; cycling; Bogotá; right to the city; play; mobilities