Automobility, Velomobility, American Mobility: An Exploration of the Bicycle Tour

Using the framework of 'automobility' as outlined by Sheller and Urry, this article uses the bicycle tour to explore one way the middle class mediates the automobile's dominance of the American landscape. The material history of the American road is first placed into the current automobilities discourse and then used to situate the bicycle tour. The romantic notion of lost public place in the city is seen as a driving force for escaping on two wheels into the 'authentic' American landscape. As the long distance bicycle tourist experiences the material landscape in a new way, the idea of a lost public landscape is challenged and the tourist is able to come to terms with his or her place in the dominant mobility assemblage of human and machine. The result is not a full resistance of the automobile, but a new conception of place and mobility.