Speaker
Description
Introduction and research problem
Low-density territories are among the most widespread settlement forms in Europe, yet they still sit awkwardly within planning categories designed either for compact cities or for marginal inner areas. The "città diffusa" of Central Veneto (Indovina, 1990, 2009), the "nevelstad" of Flanders (Dehaene & Loopmans, 2003) and the plain of Thessaly share a common condition: they are not simply "less dense" cities, but a different urban condition, a polycentric system held together by infrastructure and everyday mobility rather than by physical concentration, where connections between places matter more than proximity between buildings. In Italy these "middle territories" host more than half of the national population (Lanzani, 2024). They are inhabited, productive and provide essential ecosystem services, but they are also highly exposed to land take, to extreme weather events and to a deep-rooted car dependence (Velo & Munarin, 2023). Despite two decades of investment in cycling infrastructure, the Italian motorisation rate exceeded 70 cars per 100 inhabitants in 2024 (ISFORT, 2025).
The research starts from a paradox. Central Veneto has a deep-rooted cycling culture, a globally recognised bicycle manufacturing district and a mature landscape of leisure cycling, from long-distance cycle routes such as VenTo and the former Treviso-Ostiglia railway to a growing gravel scene. Yet the bicycle is rarely used for systematic, everyday trips. The main cycling initiatives at territorial scale are "extraordinary" projects, oriented to recreation and tourism (Savino, 2018; Pileri & Moscarelli, 2021), while "ordinary" policies capable of governing active mobility across municipal boundaries are largely missing (Mauro, 2026). Under what conditions can incremental, recreation-led cycling initiatives become a lever for a deeper transformation of mobility and territorial organisation in low-density regions, rather than a niche add-on that leaves the car-based system untouched?
This question is posed under considerable uncertainty. E-bikes are rapidly changing the distances that can reasonably be cycled; climate-related events expose the fragility of sealed, car-dependent territories; and planning competences are fragmented among many small municipalities and supra-local bodies, with no single actor responsible for the network as a whole. Even the Italian General Plan for Cycling Mobility acknowledges that the integration of cycling with spatial planning is still being consolidated (MIMS, 2022). Uncertainty here is not only a lack of data, but a structural feature of how dispersed territories are governed.
Conceptual or theoretical framework
The research builds on a literature review of 151 publications, most of them from the last twenty years, organised around two main fields. The first is active mobility, with particular attention to large-scale cycling infrastructures, good practices, and the links between cycling, wellbeing and landscape (Pileri, 2020; Pucher & Buehler, 2008). Here, automobility is read not as a mere means of transport but as a self-reinforcing socio-technical system made of infrastructures, markets, daily practices and identities (Urry, 2004), whose persistence explains why adding cycling infrastructure, without changing the spatial and social conditions that make driving necessary, has had limited effect (Sierra Muñoz et al., 2024). Research on cycling in dispersed contexts further shows that the effectiveness of municipal policies varies greatly and depends on their degree of integration (Adam et al., 2020).
The second field is territorial regeneration, an emerging approach that moves beyond point-based urban regeneration towards integrated, multi-scalar and cross-sectoral strategies for large areas, taking into account the metabolism of the wider territory (Fabbro et al., 2025; Lupatelli & De Rossi, 2025). Fabbro et al. (2025) identify seven key domains: territorial safety, forest management, food policies and economies, nature-based solutions, brownfield regeneration, new forms of tourism and energy transition. Cycling intersects several of them, but mostly through the tourism domain.
The review highlights four gaps: concrete design experiences are still rare and territorial regeneration remains largely theoretical; the two fields are poorly integrated; initiatives for systematic mobility are lacking; and there is no large-scale strategic vision, with a disconnect between large-scale and small-scale design. From these gaps derives the working hypothesis: cycling becomes a transformative force in low-density territories only when it stops being treated as a sectoral infrastructure and becomes part of a territorial project, coupled with rail and public transport, with the location of services, with the protection of open space and with the recovery of historical and landscape matrices. In this reading, the minor networks typical of the dispersed city (farm tracks, embankment roads, disused railways, local roads) are not residual spaces but latent infrastructure, consistent with the idea of the "horizontal metropolis" as a territory with its own distributed forms of urbanity (Barcelloni Corte & Viganò, 2022).
Methods
The research is part of an ongoing doctoral project and adopts a comparative, multi-scalar and design-oriented approach. Three low-density plain territories were selected not as matched samples but as positions along a gradient of maturity in sustainable mobility. Flanders, whose diffuse settlement has long been compared with Central Veneto (Grosjean, 2010), represents a mature context, where a dense rail network is combined with the strategic planning of cycle routes and cycle highways (Fietssnelwegen, n.d.; Vandenbulcke et al., 2011). Central Veneto represents an intermediate context, with a strong leisure cycling system but weak structures for everyday cycling. Thessaly, with a focus on the area around Trikala, represents an early-stage context: Greece lags behind most European countries in policies for alternatives to road transport, but Trikala has a recognised urban cycling tradition and the flat plain offers favourable physical conditions.
For each case the research combines literature and policy review, site surveys, geographic data collection and a critical analysis of the settlement system. Spatial data on cycling networks, rail stations, motorway junctions, proximity services, open spaces and the minor road network are collected from regional geoportals, open data and OpenStreetMap and managed in QGIS and PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Site surveys have been carried out in Central Veneto and Trikala; a visiting period at Ghent University, planned for the second year, will support the analysis of the Flemish nevelstad, the verification of integrated land-use and cycling strategies, field visits and meetings with researchers, planners and public officials.
Alongside the comparison, the research proceeds by design, using the "Anda" project for the Venetian mainland as a testing ground (Mauro, in press). Anda proposes two tangential cycling rings around the Mestre-Marghera urban system, connecting urban, peripheral and rural centres and complementing the existing, predominantly radial, network. Its core methodological device is the identification of "multifunctional hubs": nodes where railway stations, motorway junctions, park-and-ride facilities, safe crossings and proximity services cluster, and where intermodality and active mobility can be strengthened most effectively. The method has since been transferred to the Camposampierese area along the former Treviso-Ostiglia railway (Bottacin, 2026), which provides a first test of its replicability.
Results or expected results
The Anda study offers preliminary results for the intermediate case. Cycling accessibility in the Venetian mainland is strongly radial towards Mestre, while connections between neighbouring municipalities are poor. This gap is partly filled by the dense minor network of local, embankment and informal roads, which however is currently used mainly for sport and recreation, as it lacks continuity, hierarchy and safe crossings. The hub analysis shows that places usually perceived as marginal can play a central role: the hamlet of Marano di Mira, where a railway station, an A4 motorway junction, local services and productive activities coexist, emerges as a strategic node for experimenting with integrated interchange projects. The application to the Camposampierese confirms that a hub-based reading helps overcome the fragmentation imposed by municipal boundaries and restores centrality to real flows and relations of use.
The main finding so far is that much of the physical raw material for everyday cycling already exists in the dispersed city. What is missing is a network logic, continuity across roads, rivers and railways, well-equipped intermodal nodes and, above all, an institutional frame that treats these elements as an ordinary public infrastructure rather than as a sequence of one-off projects.
The comparative phase is expected to produce three results. First, a comparative framework between Veneto and Flanders, clarifying the conditions (governance arrangements, continuity of funding, integration with rail, spatial planning instruments) that allowed the Flemish context to move towards network planning for everyday trips. Second, a typology of leverage points through which recreational practices, including cycle tourism, association-led rides and gravel events, can be scaled up into systematic mobility. Third, a set of strategies for Central Veneto that connect cycling with environmental, agricultural, housing and public space policies, to be tested in Thessaly in order to assess their transferability to a context with limited institutional capacity and a very different starting point.
Discussion and conclusion
The contribution argues that, in low-density territories, the difference between transition and transformation is spatial as much as temporal. Incremental cycling interventions become transformative when they change the relational structure of the territory: which places are central, how distances are perceived, and which spaces are experienced as public. Recreation-led cycling is therefore not a dead end but a possible incubator: it creates users, skills, affective ties to the landscape (Pileri, 2020) and local coalitions. Without changes in the ordinary rules of the game, such as the reallocation of road space, integration with rail, stable funding lines and the coordination of land-use policies, it is likely to remain confined to leisure time.
The case of the Netherlands is a reminder that mature cycling systems are the outcome of long-term political choices rather than cultural givens (Pucher & Buehler, 2008). The common Italian remark that "this is not Holland" hides the fact that a cycling culture already exists in Northern Italy; what is lacking is its institutional recognition as a strategic resource for the mobility transition (Mauro, 2026). Uncertainty, in this perspective, need not be reduced before acting. A modular network built around hubs can grow incrementally, be adjusted as technologies and practices change, and serve as a platform for collective learning among municipalities, associations and inhabitants. By reading cycling in low-density territories as a transition pathway, the research aims to contribute to the Track 2 debate on how pathways are shaped and on the conditions under which incremental change can lead to deeper territorial transformation.
References
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