Bicycle Tourism and Pollution

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Bicycle Tourism and Pollution
Outline
The paper comprises three components. It starts with an introduction where the bicycle tourism is introduced with focus on its interaction with pollution. It is followed by the historical context of the issue that ultimately segues into a comprehensive review of the literature encompassing the discussion with reference to key theories and empirical evidence surrounding the bicycle tourism and pollution.
Introduction
Cycling and bicycle tourism is a controversial topic regarding its various benefits, particularly environmental. When global industrialization has marked the transport sector as the second biggest energy consumer in the current era, cycling emerges as a unique solution to scholars and debaters. They do neither omit any gas, nor produce disturbing noise. Another group of scholars opines that cycling is good for health as it decreases air and noise pollution and discourages inactivity experienced by car-dependent urbanization (Pucher and Buehler 391). Contrary to this, there are controversies concerning weather as a challenge for city planners to initiate cycle tourism. While looking at all the arguments, a question becomes important; when vehicles are constantly polluting air through fossil fuel and noise, should we consider other options? Rather than being in the “moving box” and adopting isolation from nature, people should encourage bicycle tourism as a more environmentally friendly, healthier, and sounder alternate cycling, which can also slow down people’s lifestyles, positively impacting their psyche.
Historical Context
In the first half of the twentieth century, cycling was a common habit on the roads. However, the advent of motors minimized the trend, filing it as slow, inconvenient, and rural means of transport. With the passage of time and prominent disadvantages of motors like pollution, cycling caught the attention of social scientists, urban policymakers, public health sectors, and cycling activists. They highlighted cycling tourism's value as inexpensive, light, silent, hygienic, healthy, sound, and democratic personal transport. They also credited it to be a faster means of moving than cars in industrialized cities, where traffic-jam is an everyday practice (Oosterhuis 234). From that age to the present time, when the world has gone globally urbanized, cycling seems to be the ultimate solution to reduce pollution by transport reforms. For this purpose, I have researched by reading a host of scholarly articles with different arguments about the need, merits, demerits, and possibilities of cycling tourism in today’s contaminated atmosphere.
Literature Review
Osterhuis credits cycling as a faster means is surprising, yet his pointing out the traffic-jam on overcrowded roads makes the point clearer and comprehensible. The second selection of scholarly articles is by Nilsson, who gives the example of the world’s most popular city for cycling, Copenhagen. He presents his model city with its essential infrastructure and other elementary approaches to reform mobility culture. Besides, Pineheiro gives us another city resembling Copenhagen in the cultural context and demanding pollution s...