220057 Cycling Cities: Interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable urban mobility, 1890s-2020s (S) (SoSe 2026)

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Increasingly aware of the contribution of motorized transport to emissions and climate change, urban governments across the world are experimenting with new, and sometimes old, forms of mobility. As such, the bicycle has made a significant comeback in many places: marginalized as an outdated vehicle in the 1950s and 1960s, policymakers now realize that the bicycle has many advantages: it does not pollute, takes up little space, is quiet, and improves public health, to name just a few. There was a time when the bicycle was the dominant mode of transportation in many European cities, but this phenomenon has received only scant attention from historians. It is only in the past few years that studies on the history of cycling have started to appear. At the same time, rethinking urban space and mobility is a hot topic in many other disciplines and the line between historical and other approaches is sometimes blurry.

In this course we will explore several approaches to the topic of cycling cities. The growing historical research on the subject will be central, but we will also look at philosophical perspectives on mobility justice, and social science approaches to mobility that could inspire historical investigations. The course presents a survey of the state of the art in cycling history and shows how a range of non-historical approaches have informed these historical studies and can inform future research.