Introduction

While cycling is a global and familiar practice, it includes human and non-human elements which are also highly contingent and locally specific. The focus of this chapter is cycling infrastructure in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. In recent years, the city has witnessed changes in every aspect of cycling, including the number of cyclists on the city's streets, the development of cycling infrastructure and the social and cultural significance of the bicycle as a mode of urban transport, among others. This chapter builds on our previous research on cycling in Sofia which examined the practices and affordances of travelling by bicycle in a post-socialist south-east European city (Barnfield and Plyushteva, 2016). By drawing attention to the situated, embodied, mundane and ambiguous elements of cycling, we sought to show how the bicycle acts as a small but important force shaping mobility in contemporary Sofia. We argued that the growth of cycling, rather than being symptomatic of increasing individualism, offered a counter-narrative to the perceived decline in public-oriented acts and affordances. Cycling in Sofia thus came to complicate what has been theorised as the cultural and spatial condition of privatism (Hirt, 2012). We also pointed to the shortcomings of infrastructural provision that erodes the capacity of cycling to contribute to convivial urban public life, while at the same time complicating the idea that Sofia can be located along a linear line of progress from less to more cycle-friendly cities.

The analysis presented in this chapter revisits and develops our discussion of cycling infrastructure in Sofia, by drawing together ethnographic observation, interviews with urban mobility activists, and document and media analysis from several research visits between 2013 and 2018. Continuing our approach of zooming in on a specific urban location and the situated interactions of people and infrastructures within it, in this chapter we focus on a cycle lane added to a central Sofia boulevard in 2017. In this process we echo the specific longitudinal frame used by Morgan (Chapter 2, this volume) although over a much shorter time period. Expanding our previous focus on the embodied practices of cycling, we discuss the decision-making processes which brought together politicians, municipal employees, mobility and cycling activists, local residents and various other actors.