Researching cycling innovations: The contested nature of understanding and shaping smart cycling futures

Abstract

With this commentary, we share our reflections at the end of a five-year interdisciplinary research project (from 2016 to 2020) on cycling innovations in living labs across the Netherlands. The commentary is the product of a collective writing effort of the researchers. It combines reflections on both the content of our research project (cycling through the lens of innovations) from various disciplinary perspectives – including socio-technical transitions, mobilities, urban design, transport planning and history – and reflections on the transdisciplinary approach (living labs) underpinning our research. We hope that our reflections can benefit other researchers concerned with similar topics and approaches. Our research project, Smart Cycling Futures (SCF), began as a proposal within the Smart Urban Regions of the Future (SURF) program, funded by the Dutch Council for Academic Research (NWO). This call of €16.5 million was co-financed by the Dutch Ministries of Infrastructure & Environment and Internal Affairs. As one of the five winning consortia – the other consortia focused on self-driving cars, influencing travel behaviour, demand-oriented public transport, and small-scale experiments – our group of mobility-oriented researchers played an active role in shaping the evolving landscape of smart mobility innovation in the Netherlands.