The socio-political facets of urban cycling and urban transport have received increasing academic attention in recent years. Studies in this area have explored several key dimensions, such as how to promote urban cycling through governmental intervention, the influences of civic pro-cycling actors and organisations, the various socio-political reasons for supporting urban cycling and the constraints and barriers associated with urban cycling. However, the majority of the literature has ignored not only the dynamic dimension of how changes in urban cycling emerge and evolve but also the interactive relationships between different categories of actors that deal with cycling issues and the relationship between these two dimensions. Most studies have adopted single case study methods based on cross-sectional data collected from economically developed countries. Thus, influential historical and dynamic elements, which may be more significant in transitional circumstances, have been largely overlooked.

This study focuses on why and how certain changes regarding urban cycling emerge and evolve in a given city that has experienced certain economic and socio-political contextual changes over a relatively long period. It adopts the field–capital–habitus conceptual framework as its analytical foundation. This framework focuses on the relational, dynamic and interactive dimensions of change caused by related actors. To overcome this framework’s dual dominant–dominated structure and the relative ignorance of the dynamic nature and influences of pre-existing circumstances, this study also adopts several analytical concepts and insights from organisational field studies, the social movement literature and governance research to form an analytical framework that focuses on relationships, dynamics and the historical dimension. Two Chinese cities – Hong Kong and Guangzhou – are selected as comparative cases and empirical data are collected through multiple qualitative methods. The empirical analysis captures the reflective relationship among transitional circumstances, embedded relational actors and changes to urban cycling and its governance.

This study explores the actions of and interactions among three categories of engaging actors – the government, civic actors and market forces – in dealing with urban cycling issues in Guangzhou and Hong Kong and the resulting long-term changes. It shows that during the change process, the consequences of the actions and interactions of previous stages have accumulated and reflective influences on both existing and emerging actors’ strategic actions in subsequent stages. This study conceptualises such influences as ‘transitions’ legacies’, which include both tangible and intangible influences. The Guangzhou case shows how the sharp transitional ‘Cycling Kingdom–Cycling Reduction–Cycling Renaissance’ process has quickly led to the accumulation of contradictory legacies for both urban cycling and cycling governance. These legacies provide different barriers to and opportunities for current dominant and active dominated actors in their strategic actions and interactions. However, the Hong Kong case reflects the hidden incremental accumulation of legacies under a no-change appearance in the ‘Cycling Burgeon–Cycling Recognition–Two Worlds of Cycling’ process, which is the result of and contributes to governmental inaction and non-governmental actors’ reactions.

This dynamic process has significant implications for various areas of urban cycling governance. First, the interaction strategies and dilemmas of the government, civic actors and engaging market forces are explored by analysing their changing positions and dispositions. Although the government is the dominant and central actor in both Guangzhou and Hong Kong, each city faces different challenges from transitions’ legacies and emerging actors. The civic actors in both cities adopt similar moderate or soft conflict strategies in their interactions with the government, but for different reasons. The engagement of market forces in the cycling field is also explained according to the tangible and intangible legacies of previous actions and interactions in each city. Second, this study indicates the four categories of tensions and changes emerging in the dual relationship and power structure and their influences on the governing logic in the field. Third, changes in other relevant issues, such as the development of an Internet-based sharing economy, can create new tensions in the urban cycling field. Inter-field influences affect the cycling field via tensions that occur as a result of interactions between the passive and insensitive government and active and sensitive non-governmental actors. Such dispositional discrepancies do not come from actors alone. They are rooted in and shaped by the pre-existing circumstances and relational structures of power in the field.

Urban cycling and cycling governance in these terms are not only a travel mode and its associated policies and infrastructures but entail the evolution and accumulation of interactions, conflicts, negotiations and changes, thus requiring further research as a change process that is structured by and that structures relational actors.