Though people have new, often liberating ways to travel singly, it is shared, publicly funded services that weld us together
In a lot of ways, cities are about movement. Commuting, cultural visits, consumer binges, social trips or just staring out of the bus window, feeling part of the flow: motion makes urban life fulfilling, sometimes very tiring and occasionally sublime. Over recent years, without much discussion, the way we move around cities has changed. The change started before the pandemic, but Covid accelerated it, and it has continued as the pandemic has apparently receded.
Since 2010, the UK has acquired bike-hire schemes and Ubers, more than 1 million electric bikes and electric scooters, and a fleet of other personal transport solutions, from electric skateboards to bikes with trailers. A whole new world of what transport theorists call micromobility, some of it backed by corporations, not all of it legal, has appeared on urban roads.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
