How culture shapes – and is shaped by – mobility: cycling transitions in The Netherlands

This chapter focuses on the relation between culture and mobility: how does culture shape mobility, and how does mobility shape culture? We investigate this relation by looking at three aspects of Dutch cycling culture. We first reveal how cycling in everyday mobility has become part of Dutch national habitus. Second, we argue that the habitual, unreflexive position of the bicycle is now challenged by emerging forms of conspicuous rather than non-conspicuous consumption. Third, we show how bike sharing schemes fit into wider trends of an emerging platform economy, holding the promise of inclusive and collective sharing but, run by private companies, actually offer expensive services. We argue that the transformations of Dutch cycling culture and how this is interconnected to social and spatial transformations contain valuable insights into how mobility more generally could be conceptualized as a driver and reflection of culture. This offers important reflections on the barriers and drivers for transformational change towards sustainable mobility.