The art of cycling policies. Keynote spoken at Rimini, Velo-city June 19 2026

Thank you very much. So, Wim Bot of the Dutch Fietsersbond is a veteran Dutch advocate and he would like to give us an overview of the many valuable insights garnered from all the editions he's attended over the years. Wim, the floor is all yours. Yes, thank you very much. And as we are all tired, I've decided to do my speech by heart. I hope it will work out fine. I have to stand here. And it's true, I think, that during this leadership we have had very interesting and good sessions on vision, advocacy and political leadership. Do you agree that we had good sessions this week? [applause] And in fact, vision, political leadership and advocacy have been a permanent feature of all those Velo-city's I visited. The first one was in 2009 in Brussels. And in my keynote I will focus on some of the most memorable sessions on these subjects I heard and reflect a little bit on their relationship. And the first one that comes to mind is JanG ehl in Copenhagen in 2010, telling his story about livable cities and designing for people. And here's a famous quotation by him. And he was very important in the change that took place in Copenhagen during the decades. And here we see the famous example of the pedestrianized Ströget. Then we had Gilles Penelosa also two times. First time in Sevilla in 2011. And he explained his vision of the 8 to 80 attitude, stressing that change could take place in every city and that the miracle was not to ask what city can do for cycling, but what cycling can do for your city. A very important approach. Then we had Marco Te Brömmelstroet in Arnhem Nijmegen in 2017. I think the first keynote speaker to really dive deeper into the language and the concepts we use of motornormativity, although it was not named that way in 2017. And he criticized also the concept based on speed and flow and promoting a totally different approach based on social interaction and streets seen as public interaction. So I think that was also very important. And when we come back to Gilles and Penelosa, I would like to stress that vision can also be very effective. But both were invited by the city of Rotterdam. Rotterdam was rebuilt as a car city after World War II. And they spoke to the urban planners, this is Penelosa during a visit in Rotterdam, and the city really changed its politics and now adopts the concept of the city lounge. And when we come back to Marco Te Brömmelstroet, very famous is his comparison that car drivers act like geese in formation and cyclists behave like sparrows in a swarm. And that has been a very powerful comparison, very successful also in social media. And I think we can conclude that after Marco's keynote in 2017, there has been much more attention for language and concepts in the Velo-city's. And especially in this one, with the fantastic tribunal we had this week. And then we had event Meredith Glaser, who built further I think on the concepts of Marco, stressing that change is not a technical intervention but a social one, calling upon us to act, to just do what we have to do. And that has been to dance with the system, which is also I think a very powerful metaphor. A session we also cannot forget for even two times was by Carlos Moreno on the 15-minute city. And he now became, attacked very viciously, and became a scapegoat of the radical right. But I think what was interesting in his concept was that the concept of the 15-minute city is not just meant for the center of a city like Paris, but also for the periphery and the banlieues. So that was for me an eye-opener, and it explains the strength of this concept. Then we know that vision is not enough. We also need leadership. And this is my old boss at Fietsersbond Esther van Garderen, and she was warning politicians for the last time here: put your money where your mouth is. And fortunately enough, we have had very good leaders, like Jeannette Sadiq-Kahn from New York, who was also twice at Velocity. And, you know, she began to construct bike lanes using pilots and temporary interventions. And she was working very steadily on a plan she had in mind, which was a very strong concept, of course. I think the same thing is now being built up around Elke van den Brandt in Brussels, who was also at Velocity, and is also meeting very heavy opposition. And I think it's important in Brussels that the reduction of speed, so 30 kilometers, is the core of the change they are putting through. And this opposition we also saw, of course, in Ghent. Filip Watteeuw was also twice at Velocity, explaining his ideas of a circulation plan in Ghent, which was, by the way, also already promoted 50 years ago in the Dutch city of Groningen, with very much success. But he received many death threats. And what he said at Velocity was, I only got applauded on the day I introduced the circulation plan. I would have liked to have that support a bit more before.He also said, we always know who is against our proposals, but we never know who is in favor of it. And here we see the opposition as it was made visible by actors during the Ghent bike parade. So that was a very good part of that bike parade, I think. Another leader I found very inspiring was Burkhard Jung from the city of Leipzig. And here he is standing beside Filip Watteeuw, because Burckhardt explained in very wise terms, I think, the need to understand our citizens and also to understand their worries, their sorrows, their opposition. And we are discussing this in relation to bikelash. But he did this in a very wise and convincing way, in my opinion. And we also can note that we need sustained political leadership. Let me quote the example of Sevilla, which organized a very good Velo-city in 2011, but afterwards the election was lost to a right-wing city government and all the cycling programs were paused. So sustained political leadership is very necessary. And then, besides vision and leadership, we need strong advocacy, role models, strong organizations. And we see many of those in the Velo-city'st too. This is the map that was used by Stein van Oosteren, who spoke in Lisbon. They were able to unite the many cycling organizations in Paris and then they were able to use this map as a powerful focus, too. And inspiring figures are also people like Amanda Ngabirano from Uganda. [applause] I don't know if she's here. But also Daniel Guth from Brazil. People working in very difficult circumstances. Although here it's not that difficult. Amanda is a fellow city, Sevilla, in 2013, speaking to some other advocates. And even more inspiring thinking, I think, was Shannon Galpin, who was in Arnhem Nijmegen. She wrote this book on how she organized women's cycling in Afghanistan under the Taliban. And I think she was one of the first keynote speakers stressing the relationship of the bicycle and emancipation of women. And we can also conclude that after that edition, the role of women at Velo-city became much more important, including the network women in cycling and all that goes with it. [applause] I want to end with some reflections on the relationship between those three aspects. Because they always operate in a different situation, in different phases of strength. And we must understand and analyze that relationship in order to be able to know what we can do. And for that it's also very necessary to analyze the broader field of mobility and the broader field of society and trends taking place. And I've always been impressed at fellow city by speeches, by speakers like Philippe Cist, Karin Vancluysen, and Kevin Mayne, who always were able to sketch those broader dimensions. For me, very useful. And we must understand that we never operate in a void. Always in a specific situation. And that's why I use the term the art of cycling policies. Here we see one by the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Rotterdam. But after yesterday evening, it should have been a Brompton with shoes on. Also, the art of cycling. But the art of cycling is to decide which steps you can take towards the realization of your goal. And I think this is much more based on intuition than on scientific model. And the art is to frame your message in a little bit different way, to change the related weight of your arguments. And I think, I must say, I was inspired by... We are now in the country of Antonio Gramsci, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. [applause] But we have to operate as if we are in a long-term war of position, in which we have to gain hegemony. We have to build alliances. And we must gain cultural influence. And it takes a long time. We have to realize that. And we have just had a discussion on bikelash. And I think we are living in a very contradictory situation at the moment. Bikelash and the rise of the radical right on the one hand, and cities leading in the transformation on the other hand. And I think it's really a very complicated dialectic. And to solve this, we have to act with optimism of the will, as Gramsci said. And I think this also means especially to involve citizens actively in the politics we propose, to support the politicians leading the transition, and to defend the positions of cycling with courage, determination and confidence. Very important. And for this, it's absolutely necessary to realize that we must defend democracy and the democratic rights of democracy organizations. Otherwise, we cannot achieve anything. That was my message to you Velo-citizens, thank you. [applause]