by Silvia Musso
It is spreading on the web, it has grown from the bottom and in one month has been collecting thousands of adhesions across Europe.
It is a real campaign of environmental awareness on cycling, which, launched on the first page of Times, following a tragic incident of Mary Bowers, Times journalist, hit by a lorry when she was just yards from arriving at work on her bike, has exploded on social networks across Europe. The campaign is called "Cities fit for cycling" and is inspired by a six minutes video that tells the story of when the Netherlands were choked with cars and decided to encourage the construction of bicycle paths. Because virtuous Netherlands was not born with cycle paths, but the current urban configuration is the result of a process of active citizenship that has seen Dutch people personally involved to deeply change their cities. With the economic boom after the Second World War the cities began to be invaded by cars, old buildings destroyed to make way for major roads. In the seventies, however, more and more citizens began to protest for the "traffic mrders" and, thanks to the oil crisis of those years, the government decided to change the face of the Netherlands.
That movement grew from house to house, with small events into squares till to cover whole Netherlands. The movement "Cities fit for cycling" is similar because it comes from bottom, but is updated to our times and to current technology. It is spreading, not among households and cities' streets, but across the European virtual streets using the web as a powerful meeting vehicle.
The manifesto "Cities fit for cycling" characterized byeight proposals for improving the safety of bicycles in the city, has arrived also in Italy baptized in Italian "Salvaiciclisti" - save the cyclists -, and raised by numerous blogs and websites. On Facebook 34 bloggers have created a page that counts nearly 7,900 members. The aim is to highlight the issue of safety of cyclists on the roads and increase public awareness about the many accidents, sometimes fatal, that occur in our cities. The Facebook page aims also to involve main Italian newspapers following Times' example, to report proposals and stress events.
The initiative is already collecting the first successes: several media talk about it; a bill that takes some of the manifest's proposals, was signed by 61 Parliament's members and a ten-point document for local administrators was created.
Bottom up, spontaneous, technological: these are the elements of this communication campaign that we hope will be as effective as that one that in the seventies allowed the urban revolution of the Dutch cities which we all yearn.
It is a real campaign of environmental awareness on cycling, which, launched on the first page of Times, following a tragic incident of Mary Bowers, Times journalist, hit by a lorry when she was just yards from arriving at work on her bike, has exploded on social networks across Europe. The campaign is called "Cities fit for cycling" and is inspired by a six minutes video that tells the story of when the Netherlands were choked with cars and decided to encourage the construction of bicycle paths. Because virtuous Netherlands was not born with cycle paths, but the current urban configuration is the result of a process of active citizenship that has seen Dutch people personally involved to deeply change their cities. With the economic boom after the Second World War the cities began to be invaded by cars, old buildings destroyed to make way for major roads. In the seventies, however, more and more citizens began to protest for the "traffic mrders" and, thanks to the oil crisis of those years, the government decided to change the face of the Netherlands.
That movement grew from house to house, with small events into squares till to cover whole Netherlands. The movement "Cities fit for cycling" is similar because it comes from bottom, but is updated to our times and to current technology. It is spreading, not among households and cities' streets, but across the European virtual streets using the web as a powerful meeting vehicle.
The manifesto "Cities fit for cycling" characterized byeight proposals for improving the safety of bicycles in the city, has arrived also in Italy baptized in Italian "Salvaiciclisti" - save the cyclists -, and raised by numerous blogs and websites. On Facebook 34 bloggers have created a page that counts nearly 7,900 members. The aim is to highlight the issue of safety of cyclists on the roads and increase public awareness about the many accidents, sometimes fatal, that occur in our cities. The Facebook page aims also to involve main Italian newspapers following Times' example, to report proposals and stress events.
The initiative is already collecting the first successes: several media talk about it; a bill that takes some of the manifest's proposals, was signed by 61 Parliament's members and a ten-point document for local administrators was created.
Bottom up, spontaneous, technological: these are the elements of this communication campaign that we hope will be as effective as that one that in the seventies allowed the urban revolution of the Dutch cities which we all yearn.
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