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Article published In: Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 5:3 (2019) ► pp.217–247

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The landscape returns the gaze

Bikescapes and the new economies

 | University of Technology Sydney
Published online: 12 November 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.18027.pen
Abstract
This paper looks at bikescapes – and particularly dockless share bikes – with a focus on their rapid proliferation and subsequent partial demise in Sydney. Four principal themes emerged from this study: first, bikes are an important part of the cityscape, and studies of urban semiotics need to take greater account of modes of transport. Second, the rise of docked and dockless share bikes has changed the ways the city is felt and perceived: as bikes circulate within the city, these shifting bikescapes make visible changes to the physical city environment. The ebb and flow of dockless bikes – from neat alignments to dispersed arrangements – provide an insight into changing patterns of work, leisure, and mobility, and present entropic rather than ordered city processes. Third, these bikes became significant discourse markers, material artefacts where discourses of consumption, convenience, contamination, and co-operation intersect. Dockless share bikes sit at the hub of a tussle over public and private ownership of space and information, in terms both of their physical incursion into public space and as syphons of personal information. Finally, they suggest not only that aspects of the cityscape may play an active role in semiotic networks, but that the semiotic landscape may be returning our gaze.
Résumé
Cet article examine les « paysages cyclistes » – et en particulier ceux des vélos flottants – en mettant l’accent sur leur prolifération rapide et leur disparition partielle à Sydney. Quatre thèmes principaux ressortent de cette étude: premièrement, le vélo est une partie importante du paysage urbain et les études sur la sémiotique urbaine doivent prendre davantage en compte les modes de transport. Deuxièmement, la montée en puissance des vélos flottants a changé la manière dont une ville est ressentie et perçue: à mesure que les vélos circulent en ville, ces paysages cyclistes changeants modifient de manière visible l’environnement physique de la ville. Le va-et-vient des vélos – depuis les alignements soignés jusqu’aux arrangements dispersés – permet de mieux comprendre l’évolution des modes de travail, des loisirs et de la mobilité, ainsi que les processus entropiques plutôt qu’ordonnés de la ville. Troisièmement, ces vélos sont devenus des marqueurs de discours importants, des artefacts matériels où se croisent les discours sur la consommation, la facilité, la contamination et la coopération. Les vélos flottants sont au centre des luttes entre propriété publique et propriété privée pour l’espace et pour l’information, par leur incursion physique dans l’espace public et en tant que pompes d’informations personnelles. Enfin, ils suggèrent non seulement que certains aspects du paysage urbain peuvent jouer un rôle actif dans les réseaux sémiotiques, mais également que le paysage sémiotique peut nous retourner son regard.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The landscape as a semiotic assemblage
  • 2.Methodology: Radical Vélography
  • 3.Reading bikes
  • 4.Order and disorder
  • 5.Bikes as discourse markers
  • 6.Data-gathering and city bikes
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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