“Cycling is possibly the greatest and most pleasurable form of transport ever invented. Ride through a city and you can understand its geography in a way that no motorist, contained by one-way signs and traffic jams, will ever be able to.” With this quote, Heba Attia’s blog Tabdeel welcomes you into her world of urban design and “artivism” (art activism). Tabdeel, which can be translated to the verbs “pedaling” and “change”, is an initiative to create cleaner, healthier and human-centred cities in Egypt and North Africa. Heba founded Tabdeel in 2018. She had just completed a master’s degree in Urban Development in Germany where she had discovered her love for cycling. Returning to Egypt, her choice of using a bicycle as a mode of transportation was met with resistance and confusion. “In Egypt, cycling has a specific image: it’s either a cool sport for young fit men, or a mode of mobility for poor people who cannot afford anything else”, Heba tells Egyptian Streets. Neither of these perceptions leave space for a young woman to cycle to work in the morning without being bothered by strangers in the street. “It…
How Tabdeel is Empowering Young Egyptian Women One Bicycle at a Time
October 6, 2021
