Resumen:
The quality of urban life is based on sustainable mobility plans, and the bicycle is becoming increasingly important. This way of transport and its use result from a combination of urban policies, local movements, singularities of the context and social configurations. This article shows the extent to which mobility policy development and implementation models give room to pro-bike urban movements and to those who influence its promotion. It also shows the importance of citizen participation in decisions on bicycle mobility systems. In this way a methodological framework is proposed in order to know the processes of implementation of sustainable mobility policies, the evolution and effects of urban pro-bike movements, to determine their relation of interaction and to analyse civic participation mechanisms in the development of these cycling systems of mobility. Therefore a two decade long (1990–2010) case study about two Spanish cities in the process of cycling transition, Madrid and Seville, is carried out.