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Bikenomics: the key-factor to redesign our cities
Recently, the debate about cycling has moved from the world of sports and the leisure industry
sectors and has become a political issue. The reason is that more and more people in Western
countries are tired of the traffic and pollution and that the so called “millennials” (those born in
the late 80s and early 2000s) are showing a growing disinterest in the car.
At the same time, people are rediscovering the use of bicycles which is going to become a part of a
new lifestyle in many cities of the western world. On the other hand, these two-wheeled pioneers
are facing a big challenge: they are forced to move in a cityscape that have been uniquely
designed, since the end of the II World War, to host cars and, therefore, are faced with the
resistance of local administrators who, frequently, do not want to change the current state of
things.
The politicians who have been called to administer our cities, they think (or, at least, they should
think) only in terms cost-benefits balance and it is for this reason that the big question that they
usally raise is always the same: "why we should rethink our cities for cyclists when there is no
evidence that a cycling city is better than a city where people move mainly by car? "
This is a real good question and if the only answer we have is just an enthusiastic "because cities
full of cyclists are the most beautiful!", we have no real hope to change anything, because beauty,
as we know, resides exclusively in the eye of the beholder. What really we need are facts and
evidences; in other words we have to prove in a peremptory and irrefutable manner that cycling is
good for the city. So the problem is: what is considered "good" in any part of the world? Easy:
money!
Cycling means money under different points of view: those who decide to use the bike instead of
the car has available an amount of extra money that can be used to buy goods and services or to
spend in bars and restaurants in their local area. But those who decide to make this choice will
also have a better health and therefore they will have a lower impact on the National Health
System (which in Europe alone is estimated at around € 110 billion per year), helping as well to:
reduce traffic congestion and pollution (and these are another 25 billion euro per year); to
develop of local trade (shops located in the vicinity of cycling networks have recorded increases in
sales of 49%); contribute to the reduction of the expenditure for the maintenance of roads. In
addition will increase their productivity on the job.
The good news is that all these data are no longer the result of a mere intuition: in recent years,
scientists and scholars from prestigious universities and reputed international institutions have
focused the attention on the return of investment on cycling and have given rise to a new
discipline that is likely to become the key to rethink our cities.

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This discipline is called bikenomics (a crasis of the words biking and economics)
If you want to learn more about bikenomics, you can start exploring libraries or rummaging
through the web looking for studies and research. Or you can attend the workshop which will be
held October 28 (2013) at the “Fabbrica del Vapore” in Milan, where, on the occasion of CityTech,
representatives of the World Health Organization, the European Cyclists' Federation, the
Politecnico di Milano and other institutions will present the results of their studies. Here you will
able to discover the existence of a tool for the assessment of the economic impact on health
resulting from going on foot or by bicycle, or that the economic benefits generated by the bicycle
are more than 200 billion a year (more than the GDP of Denmark) or that encouraging the use of
bicycles is to contribute to the creation of green jobs and that the relationship between costs and
benefits of an investment in cycling can get to 1:70.
The objective is to demonstrate that funds for the promotion of cycling are not to be considered
as costs but as investments; probably the most wise and safe investment that a local administrator
can ever do.
This article has been published in original language (Italian) on 07 October 2013 on the Citytech website by
Paolo Pinzuti. URL: http://citytech.eu/index.php/it/component/k2/item/161