Document Type

Report

Publication Date

9-2021

Publication Title

Report of the Centre for Cities

Keywords

bicycle, cycling, Windsor

Abstract

There are several themes which recur in this account. The first is that Windsor has had a lengthy and ongoing cycling presence. Repeatedly there have been efforts to marginalize cycling -and indeed write cycling out of the transportation history of Canada’s “motor city”- but Windsor’s engagement with cycling has been significant and unbroken. Engagement with cycling racing has come close to falling off at times but cycling for utilitarian and recreational reasons never has. Another (near) constant in Windsor’s cycling history is unique to the City’s co-location with Detroit; Windsor’s cycling history has often been a cross-border cycling history. Excitingly, with the provision for active transportation on the new Gordie Howe Bridge which will link the two cities, cross-border cycling is on the verge of a renaissance. As the environmental, health, equity and city-building benefits of cycling come into sharp focus in the twenty-first century, it is an opportune time to highlight Windsor’s cycling past and present. In short, Windsor has been and is a cycling city, even if we have never fully realised the potential of our flat topography, mild winters, the good bones of our urban core, and proximity to rich natural and built heritage

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