Windsor’s Cycling History: Windsor has been and is a Cycling City

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(28 September 2021) The Windsor Law Centre for Cities has released a new report, Windsor’s Cycling History, authored by Windsor Law Professor and former Dean, Dr. Christopher Waters.

Despite its Motor City label, Windsor has been and is a cycling city as well. In this report, Professor Waters recounts a century and a half of cycling history in Windsor.

From the bicycle craze of the 1890s, to the bicycle boom of the 1970s, to its resurgence during the pandemic, Windsor’s engagement with cycling has been significant and unbroken. 

A string of cycling plans in the city have been unambitiously implemented over decades. Yet Windsor’s utilitarian and recreational cycling scenes have remained vibrant, if often ignored and marginalized.

The report argues that Windsor is a cycling city, even if we have never fully realized the potential of our flat topography, mild winters, the good bones of our urban core, and proximity to natural and built heritage.

As the environmental, health, equity and city-building benefits of cycling come into sharp focus in the twenty-first century, it is an opportune time to highlight Windsor’s cycling, and cycling policy, past and present.

Report design by Hambly Woolley

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