Zagreb: Bicylce Mainstreaming and (Bi)cylce Urbanism
Beginning of June this year the first pedalafest was held in Zagreb, Croatia. Pedalafest is the ‘first full-blooded bicycle festival ever held in Croatia” and is organized by Sindikat Biciklista, a young bicycle advocacy group in Zagreb. The event received good attention from politicians, media and population which indicates great potentials for pedalafest to become a valuable series of cycling events in central Europe.
Smarter Than Car was invited for the event to give a keynote lecture, guide a workshop and to chair the ‘livable cities’ section of the pedalafest brainpool, an interactive format for people to exchange ideas and experiences. See images of STC participation below this post.
The keynote lecture STC gave on the first evening was introducing the idea of (bi)cycle urbanism as derived from the context of Beijing and STC’s international work and aimed at showing potentials how such a large scale thinking could vitalize the advocacy work in Zagreb. A lively discussion during and after the lecture underlined that the concept ob (bi)cycle urbanism can actually create debate and make people re-think their habituated approaches to cycling promotion, advocacy and planning.
On the second day of pedalafest STC was guiding a workshop introducing the concept of bicycle mainstreaming to a group of cycling advocates from Slovenija, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. Because of the scope of a bicycle urbanism approach the workshop quickly turned into a very productive exchange of ideas and development of new approaches for the work of advocacy groups in the region. The collection os methods and approaches finally encompassed great ideas such as attacking the problem, not the institutions; power mapping (institutional mapping); photoshop-bombing; bicycle strikes etc. These methods and ideas represent on one side a very smart and acupunctural advocacy approach employed by NGOs in the region but also speak of an advocacy routine confronted with high barriers to overcome when promoting cycling.
During the final day STC was participating in an event - the pedalafest brainpool - which Maja Vilotijevic conceptualized and moderated for Sindikat Biciklista. During this afternoon STC hosted - together with Tomislav Tomasevic (Green Action/Friends of Earth Croatia) - the ‘livable cities’ table, placed in a World-café-like communication format, geared to bring people together to efficiently exchange ideas and breed new ones. The brainpool was structured into three rounds looking into Zagreb’s (I) current greatest obstacles to cycling, (II) the potentials in Zagreb regarding cycling, and, (III) visions which would be dream-like ideal situations for cycling promotion in Zagreb. In terms of visions there were nice ideas (in the vein of (bi)cycle urbanism) developed at our table such as; re-connecting Zagreb along a network of cycling paths which are actually functioning as longitudinal parks (green arteries); introducing a cargo-bike share system/collective in Zagreb; or; introduce sculptural bike racks to Zagreb to gain media attention.
All in all the pedalafest in Zagreb was a great venue for us to engage in some fruitful (bi)cycle cultural exchange and to further discuss our ideas. We want to give a great “super hvala” to the organizing team and all the volunteers of pedalafest 2012. Of course we wish that pedalafest turns into a great series and are happy to help in facilitating and participating in future pedalefest events.
