Bricolage in local government policymaking on cycling infrastructure: a case study from Coventry, UK

This paper contributes to mobilities scholarship through a qualitative study of perspectives articulated by policy actors affiliated to Coventry City Council towards cycling infrastructure. Mobilities has ascribed the proliferation of political frameworks within local government contexts to distinct factions; but it has not applied these frameworks to the perspectives articulated by individual actors towards cycling infrastructure. This paper therefore draws on qualitative data to extrapolate the links between political economy and the localised, contingent nature of knowledge construction as it relates to cycling infrastructure. It suggests that actors deploy ‘value-laden imagery’ to reconcile tensions between values and local, embedded discourses. More specifically, value-laden imagery facilitates a form of bricolage which allows actors to suture over ambiguities and tensions within perspectives. In effect, actors blur the political and economic implications of their own perspectives by referring to often emotive and compelling images which, crucially, are grounded in the local context in which actors are embedded.