USOS COTIDIANOS Y POPULARES DE LA BICICLETA EN BOGOTÁ

Abstract

Despite the recent increase in bicycle studies, academic emphasis has been on the recreational use of this object, especially in the United States and Europe; leaving the popular uses and Latin America generally outside the analysis. In this region and in the context of large inequalities in access to the city and little official encouragement for alternative mobility, the use of bicycles among the working classes has enabled an alternative way of appropriating and producing urban space from an everyday-life perspective. In Bogota, Colombia, the daily use of this vehicle has had a rapid and steady growth in the last decade. However, before there were any official support and before the growing social acceptance, there was already an everyday, utilitarian and popular use of the bicycle by many workers in the city. The project, though is still in a preliminary state, aims to analyze the history of those uses and to build an historical cartography of some of those everyday informal biking-paths in Bogotá.