PAULA PEDREIRA DEL FIOL
Paula Del Fiol is an urban planner and researcher working at the intersection of participatory urbanism, mobility, and social inclusion. She is the co-founder of Urbe CoLab, a consultancy focused on collaborative methodologies for people-centered cities in Latin America. Her work explores how collective practices, community engagement, and lived experience can inform urban planning and mobility policies. She works as the technical coordinator of Roda Rosa, a participatory cycling initiative in Fortaleza, Brazil, which combines research, data production, and community-based learning to understand gendered mobility experiences and support more inclusive cycling cultures. Her research interests include bicycle culture, participatory methods, and intersectional approaches to urban mobility.
Session
Cycling is promoted as a key strategy for sustainable urban mobility. However, participation in cycling continues to vary across gender groups, suggesting that infrastructure alone does not fully explain who feels able to cycle. While much research emphasizes physical conditions, less attention has been given to how bicycle culture, mobility narratives, and collective learning processes shape relationships with cycling and urban space.
This abstract presents Roda Rosa, a cycling initiative in Fortaleza, Brazil, as a participatory experience that explores how bicycle culture is collectively constructed through practice, storytelling, and urban experiences among women cyclists. Rather than positioning participants as research subjects, the initiative functions as a laboratory in which cycling practice, data production, and collective reflection evolve together. Grounded in a gender and cycling framework, the project unfolds through thematic editions addressing transversal topics, from gastronomy, public parks, and river landscapes, where cycling becomes a tool for interpreting the city and mobility narratives.
Across editions, recurring rides, participant engagement, and monitoring generate qualitative and quantitative data on cyclist profiles, including income, race, and mobility habits, enabling an intersectional understanding of who cycles and under which conditions. Collaborative reflections include analyzing cycling infrastructure, identifying barriers, maintenance needs, and opportunities for future implementation through lived experience.
The research examines how changes in cycling frequency, perceptions of safety, confidence, and symbolic barriers influence participation. Findings highlight the role of social infrastructure, peer support, shared learning environments, and networks in fostering, engagement, and strengthening bicycle culture alongside infrastructure improvements.
By emphasizing lived experience, intersectional data, and collective knowledge production, this contribution expands mobility debates beyond solutions and frames cycling as a culturally constructed practice. It suggests that participatory cycling initiatives can serve as both research methodologies and engagement strategies, cultivating bicycle culture, promoting respect in public space, and supporting inclusive and equitable urban futures.