Belo Horizonte, as bicicletas e a utopia como estratégia de luta : uma cicloviagem pela contínua busca para transição ciclável na capital mineira e um olhar sobre a experiência de Fortaleza

Abstract

This bicycle travel begins by presenting the tools used by the author over almost 15 years of militancy defending and promoting urban mobility by bicycle in Belo Horizonte and other cities in Brazil: cycling through the streets; performing direct actions in public spaces; structuring and execute advocacy processes in the institutional policy; and carry out research on the topic. From there, the author's desire to structure the research is born, bringing several lenses through which one can read, understand and systematize what in this research will be called Bicycle Policy - or the whole set of policies, plans, programs and measures that promote the use of the bicycle as part of the mobility system of a given territory. The first chapter starts from a cross-scale analysis, from the author's body to the international discussion on bicycle mobility, covering a long journey on how cities were shaped over the 20th and 21st centuries to accommodate automobiles, in a process that excluded the bicycles and cyclists. At the end of the chapter, it is understood how cities, especially due to the role of social movements and organizations, (re)shed light on Bicycle Politics and contributed to what Olivier Razemon called the “cycling transition”. Next, the Toolbox (chapter 2) is presented, with the objective of expanding the possibilities of reading about the Bicycle Policy, highlighting two of them: the three dimensions of measures that must compose a bicycle policy - Hardware (Infrastructure), Orgware (Governance) and Software (Soft Measures), by Harms et al.; and the Système Vélo, or Bicycle System, a concept developed by Frédéric Héran that brings a series of components that together make up the System, and can contribute to increasing bicycle use in cities. With the set of tools in hand, we move on to Chapter 4, making a historical analysis of how Belo Horizonte, from 2005 to 2020, produced its Bicycle System as a palimpsest, covering challenges, advances and setbacks experienced in the capital from Minas Gerais, Brazil, in a passionate narrative, told mostly from the voices of organizations and social movements that seek their city utopias - or utopian cities. Then, a comparison is made of the historical process of Fortaleza, a national reference city in stimulating the use of bicycles, as a counter-narrative to what happened in Belo Horizonte. After cycling the route, using other methodological instruments, such as requesting access to information, interviews with local actors and research in public information sources, it is concluded that several elements of a Bicycle System can weigh positively or negatively on the end result of a Bicycle Policy. The adoption of the Toolbox as a methodological analysis tool was important to enter the Bicycle Systems of Belo Horizonte and Fortaleza, exposing them in their weaknesses, strengths and challenges to be overcome. It was concluded that Belo Horizonte, a reference in mobility planning, was unable to manage its policy, follow its objectives and achieve its goals for mobility by bicycle. Fortaleza still has great challenges in the production of urban space, including and excluding the bicycle in a daily and contradictory movement in urban planning and management.