ECF outlines conference sessions for Velo-city 2019

This year’s Velo-city, the ECF’s annual global cycling summit, is set to take place in Dublin between 25th-28th June.

Velo-city is the world’s largest conference in the area of cycling, cycling infrastructure, bicycle innovations, bicycle safety, and the social and cultural changes driven by cycling on a global scale.

Under the conference’s main theme, ‘cycling for the ages’, the summit will host seven plenary sessions, 80 parallel sessions and over 250 speakers.

According to ECF, ‘cycling for the ages’, “refers to the ages of our socio-economic systems and structures, from the past to the future, from now to the next milestone we collectively define. It alludes to the changes underway or to come, which affect cycling now and in the future. How do we create our cycling future accounting for technological advances in the transport and data world, while maintaining a link to the localised past of more human-oriented approaches?

“How do we address climate change and environmental degradation as a true global overarching threat while using our existing urban structures? How do we truly make cycling a viable solution to our modern and ever-increasing crises?”

During the conference, plenary one will focus on ‘The City of the Future’, while plenary two discusses whether policy is catching up with tech development. Plenary three details the importance of being happy and healthy, plenary four explores the journey of infrastructure from the ‘city to the greenways’ and plenary five focuses on cycle tourism.

Plenary six will hone in on the importance of partnership and collaboration before plenary seven rounds off the conference with a look at the ‘City of Today.’ The full agenda for the conference can be found here.

The conference’s Bike Parade will take place on the afternoon of the 26th of June, where delegates will be led through the streets of Dublin towards the Sutton to Sandycove (S2S) cycle route, one of Dublin’s flagship cycling projects, where they will be joined by community groups, school children and cycling enthusiasts and they traverse along the UNESCO designated Biosphere.

As well as playing host to the Giro D’Italia before now, Dublin has hosted the conference before in 2005. The conferences are held in Europe every second year and in the alternative years it rotates to different continents.

Velo-city will be held in the Convention Centre Dublin located on the banks of the River Liffey. For more information on the Velo-city programme, exhibition and registration, click here.