While there has been sustained growth in cycling as an urban mean of transport over the last two decades, it has often been accompanied by an increase in traffic crashes and deaths involving cyclists (Broe et al., 2017; Loreta et al., 2016). Many of the recommendations proposed to reduce such negative consequences rely primarily on individual behavioural changes or segregating infrastructure; however, the positive impacts of such actions are not yet proven (Dozza, 2017; Shinar et al., 2018). While these actions are certainly necessary, it has been proposed that more collective and long-standing changes in policy, education and law can be even more beneficial for cycling safety (Jacobsen, 2003; Marques and Hernandez-Herrador, 2017). Research considering social, spatial and economic disparities and their relation to urban cycling is very scarce within cycling studies and has the potential to benefit cycling safety by expanding its underlying understanding (Brown, 2016). Additionally, qualitative approaches such as the analysis of media representations of cycling safety events have only recently started attracting attention from researchers (Macmillan et al., 2016). Furthermore, there is a clear disproportion between research about cycling safety undertaken in Europe, Oceania and North America when compared to the rest of the world – in particular, Latin America. While debates around transport and inequalities are prevalent in Latin American cities, limited attention has been paid to cycling. In this study, through the analysis of secondary data and media coverage of traffic crashes involving cyclists in Bogota, Colombia, it is proposed that cycling safety research can benefit from including analysis of social, economic and spatial inequalities as well as media representation. Preliminary results show that spatial inequality in cycling safety is expressed in at least three ways: disparities in cycling infrastructure allocation by city planners; concentration of traffic crashes resulting in cyclists' deaths in low income areas; and disproportion in media coverage of cyclists' deaths in traffic according to their locations.

Spatial inequalities and media representation of cycling safety in Bogotá, Colombia

A crack in the automobility regime? Exploring the transition of São Paulo to sustainable urban mobility

At the beginning of 1947 the first elections in fourteen years were held for state governors. Adhemar de Barros, elected in Sao Paulo with large support from the communists, was an old ally of Vargas who ran his own political party, the Progressive Social Party ( PSP ), and began to compete with Vargas himself for the working-class vote. His campaign for the Government of the State of Sao Paulo had been based on lowering the high cost of living. He promised strict price controls on basic necessities and an intensive campaign against price rises. Therefore, when the Mayor of Sao Paulo announced a rise in transport fares a few months after the election of Adhemar, the hostile reaction spread through the city like wildfire. Rapid growth and the disregard of public authorities contributed to a chaotic and profoundly unequal urban landscape, where the most visible problem was the public transport system. The aim of this article is to understand the popular reaction to the rise in bus and tram fares which led to the largest urban riots in the history of the city, at that time already the largest industrial metropolis in Latin America.

Adriano Luiz Duarte

Papers

The Right to the City in Two Moments: The Bus and Tram Riots in São Paulo City in 1947 and 2013