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Cycle City will be hosted in Leicester in 2016. The two-day cycle policy and planning conference has previously been staged in Birmingham and Leeds, and last year was held in Newcastle.
Leicester is not one of the cities to have received millions of pounds from the Department for Transport via the Cycle City Ambition Grant funding but has been progressing its provision for cycling regardless. According to a piece I wrote in The Guardian this is because Leicester has an elected mayor. When he was the council leader Sir Peter Soulsby could do little for active travel, but once he was voted in as mayor he was able to start a program called Connecting Leicester which will, over the next few years, transform the way people move around the city.
The public realm improvements in the city centre are having a significant impact on investment decisions and the take up of employment land and office space, attracting companies such as IBM to move to the city.
Visitors to Cycle City will be able to see the transformation of the city first hand. The conference will be held in the £61m Curve theatre in Leicester’s Cultural Quarter on 19th and 20th May.
Organised by Landor Links, publisher of Local Transport Today, Cycle City is co-sponsored by Leicester City Council. The Association of Bikeability Schemes, or TABS, will host its national cycle training conference in tandem with Cycle City. There will also be joint conferences with inclusive cycling organisation Wheels for All and the European Cycle Logistics Federation.
Cycle City is now calling for papers to present to the 700+ anticipated delegates.
"We request papers from academics, consultants, local authority officers and councillors, developers, LEPs, workplaces, suppliers to the sector and campaigners," said Landor’s Rory McMullan.
