In
Peter Pelzers study the central question is: How can bicycle culture in Portland and Amsterdam be understood and explained? Understanding bicycle culture from a spatially conscious perspective necessitates bridging two paradigms. The first research question is: How can bicycle culture be conceptualized? The resulting answer to this question will then be related to two cases under scrutiny in his study. This is reflected in the second research question: How can bicycle culture in Portland and Amsterdam be described and understood? An important assumption in this study, on which he elaborates in Chapter 3, is that a bicycle culture cannot be addressed as a static phenomenon, but is historically shaped. This results in the third research question: How have historical pathways shaped the bicycle culture in Portland and Amsterdam? The insights resulting are the input for the fourth research question, which attempts to grasp relatively universal processes with regards to the way in which a bicycle culture emerges and its internal causal relations. What are the causal mechanisms that constitute a bicycle culture? A type of study Velo Mondial promotes and hopes we will see more of.
