Urban Attractiveness. Why Put People’s Money into Cycling Facilities?
Journal Title: Romanian Review of Regional Studies - Year 2013, Vol 9, Issue 2
Abstract
Due to the advantages offered by agglomerations, human activities have always concentrated, and cities have become multifunctional places: living places, places where goods and services are produced, culture and socialisation places. Nowadays however, the negative effects produced by agglomerations often get to overbalance the positive effects and to repel people and activities. Agglomerations often become impersonal and unfamiliar. They are no longer a “lived space” and people can hardly wait to “evade” at least during the weekend. Among the development factors for which a city should be attractive, Qualified Workforce (QwF) has become the main one, due to the knowledge society we live in. In the Western societies, the QwF has met its basic, material needs, also aiming to meet the others that are linked to the Quality of Life (QoL) (safety, health, mobility, leisure, etc.). That is why the attractiveness for the development factors is more and more linked to the QoL that a city offers, the bicycle being able to bring a large number of answers in this direction. By means of this study, we will try to show the influence that the bicycle has on the urban attractiveness factors. We will find out that the bicycle influences them all and, moreover, without producing any drawbacks in other domains. It exercises however the most powerful effects on two of the most important soft factors of attractiveness, namely QoL and image. By noting the increasing importance of the soft factors in relation to the hard factors, we will be able to sustain the opportunity of investing in facilities for bicycle. Moreover, we will show that a city which aims to remain competitive on the global market of the development factors has no more choices and has to become bicycle-friendly.
Authors and Affiliations
RADU BARNA
Keywords
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