I am currently studying for my master’s degree in Architecture, and am planning to write my dissertation on how cycling affects a person’s experience of a city. To that end I was hoping that some of you might be willing to provide me a couple of things:

1) An account of one of your journeys by bike. I am looking for accounts of primarily urban journeys, but they could be anything from your daily commute or nipping to the shops to heading across town to see friends, or just going out for a ride around town.

Ideally I’m looking for a fairly chronological account of your journey, and I’d like to know what you see, feel, hear and smell, and how you feel about those things. Are there parts where you have to concentrate on the traffic, and block out everything around you? Are there quieter sections where you can look around, do you watch people walking by, or look at a particularly good view? Do you feel exhilaration on a smooth stretch downhill, or suffer up a potholed hill? Do you feel the warm blast of a bus exhaust or a building vent, or smell the waft of fresh bread from a bakery and always plan to stop there next time you pass?

I’m not looking for anything overly long, and the quality of the writing is not important. If you’ve got, or can record a video (helmet-mounted ideal, but anything would be great) of the journey, or have a GPX/route map that you wouldn’t mind sharing too then that would be brilliant.

2) I’d like to know if you think that cycling has changed your experience of the city. How has it changed your ‘mental map’? Does it feel bigger, or smaller? Have you found new areas, new routes? Do you understand how to get around better?

I’d like to know the age, sex and occupation, and amount of cycling experience of respondents, and these might be included in the study. All participants will be anonymous beyond that, and if I do end up including any route maps or video stills in the study I will ensure that these are suitable anonymised, so that no exact addresses/destinations are included.

Unfortunately I can’t offer much, apart from my thanks, and a copy of my dissertation for those who want it once completed in January. I can’t guarantee it will make for great casual reading though!

If you’re happy to post in this thread, then that’s fine. Otherwise please PM me, and I will provide an email address.

Thanks all!

😆

Been years since I rode round cities, so can’t give the mirco experiences you are after as I’ve forgotten.

I did like to get drunk and ride around the city (London) and see all the sights at odd hours in the morning. I loved the freedom of all the road and the lack of concentration needed. Being able to view the urban environment at speed and lots of it in one ride. A Velo-flaneur – ahem!

Good luck with this.

Caught! Yes, I’ve posted this in a couple of places as I don’t expect a huge flurry of responses. Email is in profile.

And thanks Yak. Everything useful, but would agree that those fresh in the mind are best.

I can see that you are after the sort of experiences and descriptions that architecture students are taught to think about from the very start. It may come over as an open ended question to others though. [Please prove me wrong folks!]

If that’s the case, maybe suggest a questionnaire instead where you ask the questions. Start on the basics – what is the route, duration etc, then the questions you really want answered such as ‘what are the memorable sights’, ‘what smells can you remember’, ‘% of route requiring concentration on traffic to the exclusion of the surrounding’, ‘where are the people you see’ etc.

Just ideas to make it easier for people to respond.

Bartlett? Who’s Unit are you in?
I’ll try and write some for you – is this the kind of thing you’re after? When I was commuting to North Greenwich from Richmond a couple of years ago, on my journey I associated places with their smells, particularly in the evenings.
Greenwich was curry and fried chicken, New Cross – beer, curry, fried chicken, Peckham – fried chicken, burgers, the beginnings of the start of jerk, Camberwell – curry, burgers, chicken, spices, beer, fags, Brixton – jerk (particularly Jerk Island by Loughborough Junction), burgers, fried chicken, the sweet smell of herbal cigarettes, by Putney it was starting to go properly corporate – the smell that of the modern British city – rancid fat from uncleaned kitchen exhausts. Richmond was bland, no discernable food fragrance just that of the exhaust from aggressively driven Volvos.

Yep, Cycling does all that stuff. Good things and bad. I noticed and thought others should share it so I occassionally do Tandem tours of Glasgow.

My Day in Glasgow – Thu, 15 Oct

Collect client 0930.
Annoying stop start section with red lights everywhere in town centre. Passing tabacco lords mansions.
main road south for speed. Client (from the netherlands) asking about tenements and how housing styles is so very different in such a short distance. And then suddenly he is in a massive park.

1020 Pollok park – poor wee jogger got a fright as we passed her, lots of children waving at us, dogs everywhere.
10:43 at The Burrell Collection
random unplanned detour to
11:49 at Scotland Street School Museum (He mentioned Charles Rennie macintosh and I haven’t been since school)
12:35 at The Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel
1300 at BREL Restaurant
1500 at Sharmanka Kinetic theatre
16:03 at People’s Palace and Winter Gardens
16:30 at Finish
Powered by Travel Timeline from TripAdvisor

I love how you meet people very easily (especially on a tandem). A bicycle shrinks a city so much. I went to london expecting a horrifying commuting experience but it was no worse than Glasgow and road speeds were slower. In a day I could rattle off 3 or 4 london attractions at leisure where my pal on public transport only managed 2, got fed up and then came home.

I like the cerebral part of navigating traffic on bikes.

Male experienced (occasional practical professional cyclist ) Technical Stage Manager.

I can see that you are after the sort of experiences and descriptions that architecture students are taught to think about from the very start. It may come over as an open ended question to others though. [Please prove me wrong folks!]

If that’s the case, maybe suggest a questionnaire instead where you ask the questions. Start on the basics – what is the route, duration etc, then the questions you really want answered such as ‘what are the memorable sights’, ‘what smells can you remember’, ‘% of route requiring concentration on traffic to the exclusion of the surrounding’, ‘where are the people you see’ etc.

Just ideas to make it easier for people to respond.

As an architect/tutor/cyclist, I completely agree with this. But will try and email you a response later.

I work in outreach and ride across Edinburgh (and beyond) to varying locations for shifts everyday. It’s certainly changed how I feel about the scale of the place in which I live. This is starkly apparent when I’m forced to walk anywhere.

I could write a lot about my experiences and interested to do so but finding time is an issue at the moment. Might get back to this.

Just sent you a reply, hope it helps.

So, if I’ve understood this correctly – rather than creating a psychogeographical record of a place, it’ll be cycle-geographical. 😉

Does the term ‘City’ stretch to include town?

I’m game for this – when do you need ’em by?

Just been cycling through West London, and the architecture always amazes me. I hardly look where I’m going, and I do sometimes choose routes that have fabulous buildings on them.

Today I started at Gloucester Road, went through Hyde Park, Marylebone, and UCL to get to King’s Cross, far to much fantastic stuff to even look at it all from a bike! Some beautiful stuff there – Marylebone High St (that I went through on the way home) is a particular highlight. Interesting also to note how the houses get visibly older (i.e. smaller and plainer) as you go east.

The things that come to my mind are

1) What was it like when these houses were new?
2) Who the f can afford to live in them now?
3) These were big houses and blocks of flats at a time when most of the rest of the country was still in wooden houses and small towns – which is why it doesn’t look like anywhere else
4) I can’t help but romanticise it, even though I know that its the result of staggering social inequality 200 years ago, built on the backs of the working classes (my ancestors) and even slaves.
5) I compare this experience to going down a hole to sit on a tube, being made to feel slightly ill then coming up with no idea of where you actually are, which is what I used to do when I only visited occasionally.

I could happily spend a couple of hours making that journey!

I’ll write something for you. If I don’t send you an email by 9:00 pm tonight, use the email in my profile to remind me.

I ride straight through Cardiff every day, so can probably offer something useful.

email on it’s way, I really enjoyed writing 🙂