Towards a Competitive Sustainable City: Cycling as an Opportunity

This chapter analyses the dynamic of the development of cycling in Italy situating it also in the European context from an economic and strategic perspective. With this aim, first there was a study of the challenge of rapidly growing urban populations in spatially very limited areas affects not only residential housing construction. It also relates to urban infrastructure and services. This led to identification of new mobility needs, met mainly by private means, with implications in terms of congestion and air pollution. Results are analysed in terms of total trips of non-motorized urban mobility and help at understanding how promoting cycling is important for individual health, environmental sustainability and transport demand management. The chapter brings the debate on sustainable transport policy into direct confrontation with the embodied practice of cycling in an urbanized environment.