Cycling the city, re-imagining the city: Envisioning urban sustainability transitions in Thailand

Urban sustainability transitions are journeys of transformative socio-technical change to set course for an envisioned future city. These journeys start out in the minds of change agents as vague conceptual images inspired by far-flung ideals, which are then further substantiated and articulated as ‘urban imaginaries’ – shared understandings of what constitutes a desirable future city. The conceptual contribution of this paper lies in demonstrating the power of the urban imaginaries notion to studying the process of envisioning in the context of sustainability transitions. By following a number of prolific Thai cycling campaigners through the streets of several cities in Thailand – focusing on the urban imaginaries they articulate – this paper shows how urban sustainability transitions are envisioned from the bike saddle, how these imaginaries are mobilised to empower cycling and how a seemingly disparate set of urban development pathways converge around technological artefacts and material infrastructure. 城市可持续性转型是社会技术变革之旅，目的是为展望中的未来城市设定方向。这些变革之旅 始于变革倡导者脑中由远大理想所启发的模糊概念意象，这些理想随后进一步具体化并表达为 “城市想象”，即对于什么构成一个理想未来城市的共同理解。本文在概念上的贡献是展示了城 市想象的概念对于研宄可持续转型语境中的展望过程之意义。本文在泰国多个城市的街道上随 访了泰国骑行运动的多位多产型倡导者，重点关注他们所表达的城市理想，展现了骑行者如何 展望城市可持续性转型前景，这些想象如何被用于推动骑行运动，以及各条看起来分散的城市 发展路径如何汇聚至技术工艺品和物质基础设施上。