Tänään ehtii vielä jättää tiivistelmän, mikäli mielii pitää kesäkuussa Wienissä Velo-city 2013 -konferenssissa esitelmän tai muun esityksen. Ohessa malliksi omani.

Today is the last day to submit your abstract for the Velo-city 2013 conference which will take place in Vienna next June. The Velo-city Program Committee is seeking your contribution, which should be relevant to at least one of the conference themes (cycling cultures, cycling cities and cycling benefits) and help participants to move towards cycling-friendly cities and regions and to create thriving cycling cultures. Here’s mine as an example.

Title

Creating cycling-friendly public administrative cultures: How to shift and influence the perception of cycling that public administrations have? A case example from Helsinki, Finland, 2009-2012.

Abstract

The public image of cycling has slowly begun to change across Europe and beyond the continent over the recent years. After having been mainly classified as leisure or sport for a long time, the fact that in the urban context cycling also plays an important role as a means of transport has begun to be broadly recognized.

This lecture provides insight on an ongoing success story of changing the public perception of cycling in Helsinki. In the capital of Finland this shift of paradigm has taken place during the period of four years between 2009 and 2012.

The lecture focuses on the experiences of bringing together NGOs, elected decision makers and civic administration employees. The main questions that the lecture tries to answer are:

• Can car-centric administrative cultures change to cycling-friendly?

• How do bicycle advocacy groups influence and affect city administrations?

• How can elected officials from one hand and civil servants from the other hand involve cycling advocates?

• If we take it for granted that urban planning could solve all problems, why have we not yet done so?

• If urban planning is not accepted as a magic bullet, what else is needed to make city administrations cycling-friendly?

Contributors biography

Tulenheimo is a livable city advocate. He works as a Policy Officer for Urban Mobility at the European Cyclists’ Federation. Tulenheimo was the Helsinki City Public Works Committee Vice-Chair from 2009 to 2011. You may find him on Twitter at @tulenheimo.

Key words

cycling-friendly, administrative cultures, public image, paradigm shift