The reimagining of the cityspace lies at the heart of the book In Praise of the Bicycle (2008) by the anthropologist Marc Augé. By putting the bicycle in the center of his essayistic text, he discusses the mythological context around the cycling practices, the subsequent crisis of the myths moving on to a utopian thinking and dreaming about the cityspace. Departing from his very own experience with the cycling culture in France after WWII and its surrounding textual and filmic discourses, Augé addresses the cycling practices in connection to oneself and the other. According to him, cycling practices allow for a variety of human experiences which are closely linked to the expressive modalities and the enunciation values as outlined by Michel de Certeau in his book The Practice of Everyday Life (1980): experiences of freedom and solitude, self-cognition, individuality and emancipation, relationality and solidarity, spatial and temporal awareness. Augés main question, however, is how the cityspace can be reimagined and transformed and which role can the bicycle play in this – as he calls it - ‘revolution’.
This contribution explores the relevance of Augés thoughts on cycling practices for current cities and the reimagining of cityscapes, while also discussing some of its limitations.