(Re-) claiming urban streets: The conflicting (auto)mobilities of cycling and driving in Berlin and New York

Abstract

In the course of the twentieth century, planners have transformed cities by creating an “automobile urban fabric” and increasingly produced urban streets as spaces of “automobile inclusion”, ordered by a seemingly rational “traffic logic”. Streets have been primarily coded as a space for cars while excluding other traffic modes such as cyclists or pedestrians as well as uses that are not connected to movement. It is this logic and street code that the contemporary ideal of sustainable urban mobility aims to transform: streets should be made for people and accommodate different modes of mobility to overcome cars’ supremacy. This paper takes current planning processes and developments in Berlin and New York as a starting point to explore cyclists’ interest in street space and how it has historically developed since the mid-nineteenth century. Thereby, it will show that the history of urban automobility and urban cycling are deeply intertwined.