Exploring Urban Cycling in Zagreb: Qualitative Methodological Insights

1. Positive Versus Reflexive Science: Methodological Grounds for Studying Cycling in the Urban Context of Zagreb Damir Šoh Research Assistant University Center for Croatian Studies Borongajskacesta83d 10000 Zagreb dsoh@hrstud.hr Qualitative Transitions: Issues of Methodology in Central and South-East European Sociologies, Rijeka (Croatia), November 19-21, 2010

2. Every bike ride is structured.We can explore, understand and (if we feel the need) critique these underlying structures to our bike rides. Dave Horton

3. Positiveversusreflexivescience (1/3)

4. Positiveversusreflexivescience (2/3)

5. Positiveversusreflexivescience (3/3)

6. Research question • What can bicycle riding tell us about structuring forces that define urban spaceof Zagreb? • Everyday life experience as a starting point • Focusing on urban change

7. Urban space as place (1/2) Three necessary and sufficient features of place: • Geographic location • Material form • Meaningfulness

8. Urban space as place (2/2) • Places are doubly constructed: most are built or in some way physically carved out; they are also interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood, and imagined • In spite of its relatively enduring and imposing materiality, the meaning or value of the same place is labile – flexible in the hands of different people or cultures, malleable over time, and inevitably contested

9. The case of Zagreb • Rapid urban change in transitional period (from 1990s onward, especially from the year 2000) • Hierarchical model of urban planning – a gap between developmental activities and the totality of planned space • Detachment of public and private investments • Lack of developmental strategy – public space opened up to who’s intervention and for whom?

10. Why bicycle riding? • Cycling as an activity enacts public space and forms contested place(s) • Development of public space meant for bicycle riding (namely roads, bike tracks and lanes) reflects wider forces of urban development in a specific way • Cycling tactics as “deviant”: • In a dominant car culture/car-centric society • Concerning paradoxes in traffic regulation

15. Focusing urban cycling – methodologicalissues • Phenomenoninforms us aboutwhichmethod to use or vice versa? • Under-researched phenomenon in Croatia – lackof data • Number of cyclists and cycling rates • On the rise in developed countries (of Western Europe), dropping down in developing countries; whatabout Zagreb? • Grasping urban change “inmotion”/”inaction” • Context versus place – tacklingmeaning(s) • Participant observation • Power effects • Proceduralobjectivity

16. Possiblevenues for furtherresearch • Under-researched tension between cycling as an enforced and as an elective practice • Law abiding citizens breaking the law…and get caught – “putting things in place” • Negotiating labels in contested space – loosing or expanding place(s) for cycling (both as anactivityand as a culture) • Cycling as a performativeact – embodiedunderstandingofthebicycle