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The term 'smart cities' describes a bundle of informational technologies that are profoundly reconfiguring how cities are managed and experienced. This piece is an introduction to a special issue of the journal on cycling, cities, and smart technology. For all the attention on smart cities within the social sciences, surprisingly little scholarship has focused on the ways that specific technologies and practices are enrolled or incorporated into ideas and visions for the smart city or smart urbanism. The articles in the special issue "Cities and Smart Technology: The Case of Cycling" seek to address this lacuna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cities worldwide, cycling is increasingly upgraded with smart technology and is included in smart cities' visions and projects. This process has not been problematized in public discourse, as smart innovation is seen as a potential booster of the known benefits of cycling. Drawing on critical literatures on smart cities, smart mobility, and degrowth and using the case studies of Copenhagen and Amsterdam, the article opens up a more critical conversation on the subject, discussing the role of "techno-solutionism," technology push, and pro-innovation bias in the process of "smartification" of cycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cycling is increasingly seen as a solution to a large variety of urban problems, and as such continues to inspire innovations that aim to upscale cycling to unprecedented levels. Taken to the extreme, these ideas promise a future 'Velotopia' in which cycling constitutes a dominant or single mobility mode. Focusing its attention on Dutch cycling innovations and two recently envisaged cycling utopias by Steven Fleming and Cosmin Popan, the present paper offers a critical exploration of current velotopian urban imaginaries. It does so by tracing their ideological ancestry back to two visionary urban designs of the 20th century: the dense city of speed and efficiency of Le Corbusier, and the endless Babylon of Constant where mobility is a means of discovery, play and human interaction. Our analysis shows that both Corbusian and Constantian understandings of mobility are reflected in current velotopian imaginaries, not only in opposition but also in combination with each other. This combination of Corbusian and Constantian velotopian imaginaries, we suggest, has largely become part of mainstream urban discourses instead of providing a radical alternative to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There is a shift from a perspective biased towards visual methods to a broader understanding of the multisensory phenomenon known as "sensescape". Yet, the interplay among senses remains underexplored. • There is a lack of a universally agreed-upon definition for certain affects which are often characterized by their longer durations, ambiguity, and irreducibility. • Some functional studies explore attitudes to enhance cycling rates, while identity research emphasizes local context. Identities of cyclists in our sample face marginalization, stigma, disadvantage, and invisibility. • Retrospective surveys and interviews are dominant, but growing interest in mobile methods enhances real-time and context-specific data collection. • The positive values of cycling experiences have been largely ignored in our sample of studies, suggesting that the dominant narrative is still guided by the assumption that mobility is a disutility. When evaluating cycling subjective experiences (CSE), mobility researchers have questioned the depictions of cycling as an efficient, fast, and solitary mobility mode. By reframing cycling in terms of its emotional impact on the cyclist, research to date has explored dimensions such as fun, relaxation, and sociability of cycling experiences. Yet, these insights have not been integrated into a holistic understanding of CSE. Addressing this gap, this paper asks: what is the CSE exactly and how do we measure it? We selected and analysed in-depth 50 articles with the aim of unpacking the innate characteristics of CSE. The paper makes a contribution to the research on CSE by presenting a novel framework that clarifies the relationships within existing literature, and identifies measurement methods aligned with this framework. The three interrelated core aspects of CSE are 1) sensory interpretation, 2) affective states, and 3) cognitive construction. Additionally, the three identified methods are 1) retrospective, 2) interceptive, and 3) mobile methods. Notably, retrospective surveys and interviews emerged as the dominant methods employed in the field. However, there has been a growing interest in mobile methods, which enable the collection of real-time and context-specific data, thereby enhancing the generalizability of research findings. Through our analysis we have found that the positive values of cycling experiences have been largely ignored in our sample of studies, revealing a bias of researchers to focus on mobility as a disutility. Based on our findings, we urge planners and scholars to rethink their implicit efforts to mitigate the negative effects of cycling experiences and look for opportunities to optimize for positive cycling experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of cycling is about to change. At least, this is apparent if we are to believe the multitude of innovators, start-ups, incumbent industries, policy actors and consultants proposing to harness the power of digital techniques to improve and transform cycling experiences, infrastructures, and gadgets. This 'smartification of cycling' is a phenomenon that is increasingly attracting attention and a variety of interests, fuelled both by the processes of transitioning to smart mobility and a boom of attention to cycling in cities worldwide. However, proposed cycling futures, both implicit and explicit, receive little critical scrutiny. Here, we fill this gap by mapping smart cycling innovations and their key features. We examine how innovations are believed to change the way cycling is practiced, made sense of and governed. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, we analyse 86 website texts of smart cycling innovations and systematically outline changes envisioned by innovators. Having identified tensions between and within a range of promised futures, we conclude that smart cycling futures are multiple and contested, just as cycling presents are. Therefore, we propose a number of questions for further research to advance a more nuanced understanding of the range of futures of smart cycling in academic thinking and potentially to support decision-making at different levels of governance. Understanding diverse, contested, embodied and embedded cycling presents is part and parcel of imagining and co-creating (smart) cycling futures. • Smart innovations change the way cycling is practiced, made sense of and governed. • Smart cycling futures are multiple and fraught with tensions. • In mature cycling contexts the bicycle is increasingly treated as a car. • Innovations reproduce a contested understanding of responsibility for road safety. • Smart cycling may support the trend towards neoliberalisation of transport planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]