BRUSSELS (BRAIN) — The 2018 Velo-City international advocacy summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro, the European Cyclists' Federation, the event's organizer, announced Monday.
The ECF has been organizing the annual conferences since 1980. This year's conference is being held later this month in Taipei, Taiwan, directly preceding Taipei's annual bike trade show. The 2017 conference will take place in the Netherlands.
"After taking Velo-City from Europe, to North America, Australia, and Asia, the ECF Board made an unanimous decision to have a South American edition of Velo-City: and Rio was the clear choice," said ECF's president, Manfred Neun.
Rio has a population of 6.5 million, making it the biggest city to hold a Velo-City conference since London in 1984. Since 2012, Rio has made a conscious effort regarding sustainable transportation and bicycling. This has come in the form of the construction of bicycle lanes (such as the downtown Ciclo Rotas Project), a bicycle sharing scheme (Bike Rio, in partnership with Bank Itau), and a shared vision alongside civil society to promote bicycle use in Rio over the next 10 years (Vision 2025).
