Maria Alejandra Rubio Rojas
(blog pri predmetu Science Communication na MPŠ)
July 17, 2024

A mountain bike was the first thing I bought with my first paycheck after graduating as an anthropologist almost ten years ago. I used to live in a chaotic city where travelling by bicycle was the most convenient (and environmentally responsible!) way for me to reduce the stress from congested public transport, unreliable schedules, and menacing pickpockets. 

Travelling by bicycle was the perfect way to navigate Bogotás’s broken streets filled with holes and tricky bike paths that suddenly leave you at the mercy of your skills to zig-zag along cars and through sidewalks, receiving, from time to time, the horns and shouts from some car drivers, who still believe that driving a car means having a better socio-economic status.

Occasionally, I also heard comments about how health-damaging the smog could be that I was breathing from the motorcycle hordes and ancient buses. However, I was confident that the peace of mind I got from the physical activity (and adrenaline rush!) on my bike was worth it.

Cities worldwide are expanding their bike infrastructure as a promising intervention to improve the inhabitants’ quality of life. Cycle paths are intended to facilitate the transition to sustainable travel modes and have a wider positive impact on people’s health, the quality of the environment, and the economy. 

In Slovenia, more than half of journeys shorter than 5 km are made by car. This country has the largest share of household expenditure used for transport in Europe, and its share of greenhouse gas emissions from transport is also large. No surprise, traffic congestion is one of the most pressing problems, and creating cycle paths and widening sidewalks is the urban transformation strategy implemented to reduce motorized transport and its consequences. 

The scientific evidence to date indicates that cycling can only be promoted as a healthy behaviour if the city makers provide adequate infrastructure to prevent the health impacts of air pollution exposure. Cycling contributes to increased physical activity, mental health, and social interaction and reduces vehicular emissions. Nevertheless, exposure to poor air quality can worsen existing health issues and trigger symptoms like respiratory irritation and breathing difficulties, potentially leading to serious conditions like asthma and heart disease. 

To provide evidence-based starting points for designing the most appropriate cycle paths, we are doing a citizen science project in Ljubljana under the figure of an “urban living lab”. We are engaging in the research process with diverse stakeholders, including cyclists, public authorities, representatives from community organizations, and the industry.  Cyclists will carry sensor devices to measure air quality, noise levels, and physical activity in “conventional” bike routes and less polluted “alternative” routes. They will also provide biological samples (pee in the pot) to compare health-related exposure effects between conventional and alternative routes and participate in workshops with diverse stakeholders to co-create urban strategies that help reduce cyclists’ exposure to environmental pollution. 

The promotion of bike commuting on roads with reduced exposure will require the intervention of elements on the physical (e.g., built and natural environment) and the psychosocial (travel behaviour and sociocultural mobility context) dimensions of urban cycling. For this reason, the project will entail the following activities:

• Initial mapping workshop where stakeholders will identify the bike routes’ physical and social environment characteristics to be evaluated.
• Training workshop where bike commuters will co-design specifics of a data gathering protocol to assess and compare personal exposure in “conventional” and less polluted “alternative” routes.
• Cyclists will collect environmental data, and a small group will participate in ride-along interviews to describe deeply their experience.
• Co-creation workshop where stakeholders will discuss and co-create data-driven strategies to reduce bike commuters’ exposure en route.  

The data regarding the exposure levels in different bike routes, the associated health-related effects, the mobility patterns, and the understanding of the environmental pollution health risks and health-protective behaviours will help design adequate urban interventions to protect urban cyclists from environmental pollution. Including both infrastructure and behaviour change interventions.

The ethnographic approach (the anthropological method par excellence :)) will serve to describe the social process of bringing together multiple stakeholders to co-create urban health strategies. It will facilitate a context-specific understanding of drivers and challenges to reduce environmental exposure among bike commuters in Ljubljana from the perspective of diverse stakeholders. 

Such a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach is part of a rising research and practice field so-called “urban health”. It encompasses the question of how every physical and social feature of a city impacts the health of its inhabitants. It focuses on the unequal spatial and social distribution of the urban environment features (like air quality) that translate into health problems among different population groups.

Riding a bicycle, either on the mountain trails or the urban paths, gave me the feeling of freedom. When the fear of being robbed stopped me from feeling safe to ride the bike in my home city, I knew I had to leave. 

Now, here I am, not only living in a country where I can enjoy the bike but also doing doctoral research about how we can transform the cities, on the physical and social levels, so we can move around them and experience them in the most convenient, healthy, safe, enjoyable, sustainable way. 

This underlies my passion for urban health research: bridging the gap between citizens’ daily experience of the city, policymakers who design and implement programs intended to improve wellbeing, and researchers from multiple disciplines who assess the effectiveness of such programs to address public health and environmental concerns.