Métropoles (Dec 2014)
Entre alternatives et entrepreneurialisme, le renforcement des pouvoirs politiques urbains
Abstract
This article hopes to contribute to debates supporting the alternative or entrepreneurial notion of urban transport policies, beginning with municipal decision makers’ policies favouring bike-sharing systems in Europe from the middle of the 1960s. It aims to analyse the political factors that led to the emergence of the first bike-sharing systems, to their institutionalization and to attempts to standardize these plans that were initiated by large private groups. Analyzing political factors in the development of bike-sharing systems sheds light on the various levels of legitimation that these policies offer urban decision makers. They show that decision makers ally themselves with groups of different actors according to historic opportunities and territorial contexts in order to reinforce their power and legitimize their authority. Analysis of the political dimension also allows the role of users and associations in mobility policies to be re-examined, above all in terms of their disagreements. This text proposes a stimulating approach to study the development of contemporary mobility alternatives.
