A master thesis from Aalborg University
Whatever Floats Your Bike: Investigating Dockless Bike-Sharing Schemes in Milan
Author(s)
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2018
Submitted on
2018-05-20
Abstract
Free-floating bike-sharing companies have taken the world by surprise, with many authorities and citizens unprepared for their arrival and in need to develop new coping mechanisms. Through the lenses of the Multi-Level Perspective and Staging mobilities frameworks, the research investigates incumbent and nascent networks, discourses and practices revolving around the bike-sharing world in the Italian city of Milan. The research aimed to understand how these new mobilities infrastructures affect the cycling landscape of the city. The data was collected through interviews with experts and informal actors, first-person and visual ethnography, and supplemented by secondary sources, such as press articles. The results of the inquiry suggest that the free-floating bike-sharing schemes, despite being very visible in the urban space, have not yet managed to exert much influence on the mobility patterns in Milan on the regime level. In particular, they have not displaced the docked bike-sharing scheme as the main choice for commuters using bike-sharing. Nevertheless, a closer inspection of the niche level has unearthed a world of practices deviating from what the designers of these systems had in mind, including vandalism, nightlife ‘drunken mobilities’ and underground bike racing. While there is much controversy surrounding these schemes, especially concerning the sustainability of their business model and their use of sensitive data, they have disrupted some aspects of the docked system to indicate new ways of arranging such schemes. Based on our research, we propose a set of recommendations for a new, hybrid scheme that would combine the benefits of both docked and dockless schemes, while at the same time being more socially inclusive and protecting user privacy better.
Keywords
Documents
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