‘Bikes are Such a Nuisance’ – Visually Impaired People Negotiating Public Space in Groningen

Abstract

Groningen, the seventh largest city of the Netherlands, has a long tradition of improving accessibility of its city centre. In 1977, the centre was radically modified by replacing a six-lane motorway with an increasingly car-free centre (Nicholson-Lord, 1993; see Tsubohara and Voogd, 2004 for extensive discussion) with a central market square, reclaimed from a traffic roundabout. The leftist city council of Groningen has since promoted the use of bicycles and provided the necessary infrastructure (bicycle paths and public transportation) in a top-down procedure which virtually excluded target groups or social organisations. This approach was initially heavily opposed by shopkeepers until they realised the positive impact of the council’s measures on their profits in the mid1980s and began to pressure for more pedestrian areas (Bratzel, 1999). In order to keep the city accessible, policy developments and city planning were based on the principles of the ‘compact city’ which intended to restrict suburban sprawl by shortening distances between residential areas, the workplace, and locations for shopping (P. Allen, 1994; Bloemkolk and Huis in’t Veld, 2001). As a result, more than 50% of Groningen’s 182,000 residents use the bicycle as a key means of transportation making Groningen the Dutch city with the most bike trips per day (Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek, 2007). In 1993, an American Bicycle magazine already labelled Groningen the Number 1 bicycle city of the world and