DRIVING RHYTHMS (ARTICLE #02)

The second article examined the body-environment relations on day-to-day driving routes. The presented research question here was the same as above: what kind of temporal patterns and repetitions structure body-environment relations on habitual urban routes?

Like above, the analysis of the interview data focused on the temporal elements of the driving route narratives: how different kinds of temporal frames came up in how the informants perceived, and told about, their day-to-day environment, and the role of the particular route context (Appendix 14).

The driving routes consisted of repeated driving routes in city centre areas, or between the suburbs or outer central areas of the city and the centre. The routes consisted, in some occasions, of residential streets in the suburbs, or brownfield areas on the outskirts of the city, but they mostly consisted of highways and streets on urban areas, which were the main interest of the analysis. As part of the interview event, the participants produced screen captures of the driving videos (see section 3.2.1), which depicted mostly pathways (affected by the use of video as a method and the framing of the video, which depicted the scenery directly in front of the car),

specific buildings, vistas, and intersections as identified nodal points on the route, and as sites of different spatial uses. It should be noted here that the driving interviews we conducted during winter-time, which presumedly affects the data, in specific, in comparison to the other research data used in the study, which were collected during the spring/summer. It can be presumed that the winter-time activities in Nordic cities (like Tampere and Turku here) are affected by the cold temperatures and the low light conditions of winter-time, which affect what kind of observations and notes are, or can be made, of the environment and the events and happenings taking place there.

The driving practice steers the interest on the body-technology-relations – towards the hybrid ‘driver-car assemblage’ (Dant 2004) where the body, the car, and the demarcated driving spaces (including the driving lanes and parking lots, legislative signs and symbols) of the street form an interconnected mobile assemblage. The driving practice is (like walking above) acted out in a three-way dialogue of rhythmic route-body-environment relations, though here the body is substituted with the driver-car assemblage. In the driving practice, the concrete materialities produced by the body-assemblage are highlighted in the narratives from three perspectives: the flow of traffic and the continuous need to move with it, the limited possibilities for environmental perceptions (the car chassis as a ‘filter’) and engagements due to the delimited driving spaces, and the material and social interactions inside the car.

The analysis of the driving interviews highlighted three themes on the temporal and contextualised body-environment relations (examined in more detail in Article

#02). The first one relates to how the driving practice (1) ‘embeds’ ones movements as part of the (motorized) mobility flows. The habitual driving practice, daily (subjective) schedules, the route as a more-or-less set collection of pathways, other practical route knowledges (slow or traffic-heavy paths, ‘long’ traffic lights, blocked pathways), and the overall reasoning for car-use (and the possibility for using other movement modes), connect to the routine-like performance of the route. In other words, the route knowledges are used to embed one’s own movement in the environment. This also include practices what could be termed as route ‘hacking’, similarly to the walks above, where the informants brought up their know-how in relation to the environment and the movement in it, including knowing and using some of the hidden paths of the city, or knowing the times of busy traffic (such as the morning commute) and how to avoid them (if possible) by managing their own schedules or using alternative pathways. The second theme refers to (2) the ‘perceived’

temporal elements of the environment: the events and happenings in the

environment, traffic regulation, the perceived character of passed-by or driven-through areas, and the effects of the weather or the season on the environment.

These elements provide a kind of a rhythmic backdrop for the drive – or a set stage (Jensen 2013) – that produce connections to the environment and the city in general, mostly through visual perception. It also includes notions related to specific buildings with subjective relations, experiences and memories, as well as notions of other embodied contexts the informants have for specific sites (especially in the city centre areas, where other uses, such as leisure time and shopping trips connect to the route and its specific context). The third theme relates to the temporalities in the

‘middle’ between the driver and the environment – the (3) ‘interactions’, unexpected events, the route as a process, and the micro-temporalities related to moving as part of the traffic flow. Here the driver’s own ‘blueprint’ of the route (produced through knowledges and build-up experiences based on earlier goings) that is fit to the frame set by the material and regulatory elements of the environment, is actualised and performed. The continuous flow of the movement is dotted by specific localised points where different kinds of interactions have the potential to take place, such as having to watch out for young school children crossing the street, or being alert in relation to the driving practices of other drivers, or specific physical things one has to note when driving as part of the flow, such as the effects of street maintenance sites.

Similar mediacy/immediacy divide can be also identified here, as in the walking routes: the ‘embedding’ and ‘perceiving’ factors being more mediated – acknowledged, remembered and reflected elements that have become more or less part of the route’s expected script due to repetitions. In contrast, the ‘interactions’ are more immediate elements of the environment, approached and engaged in situ. The happenings of the inside car space also play a key role in the driving practice and the performance of the route. The casing of the car, together with the forward motion of the car directs the perceptual (visual) connections between the driver and the environment towards the spaces opening in front, narrowing the body-environment relations into a more stretched out form, along the form of the driving lane. The driving practice is connected to the relations inside the car, in specific, if driven in a company (as was the case with some of the interviews). The semi-private inside space of the car – the ‘bubble of territoriality’ (Scollon and Scollon 2003) – provides possibilities to affect the experience of movement, and to produce new rhythmicities.

The analysis highlighted driver-passenger relations (including the interview event itself), and the various micro-practices, such as listening to music or phone use, which are used to make the inside car space one’s own whilst moving in the public;

whilst ‘embedding’ one’s own mobile ‘bubble’ as part of the flow of the traffic (see also Bull 2004).

Continuing with the above notions of de Certeau’s (1990/2013) tactics/strategies, the analysis focused, in specific, on the route as an embodied place-making and rhythm-making process, set against the set-from-the-above regulations, materialities and shared temporalities of the environment. The article made use of Jensen’s (2013) notion of ’staging mobilities’, where he highlights the role of the material form (and the design of it) in how mobilities are on the other hand set up from the above – as ‘staged’ – and on the other acted out from the below – as ‘staging’ (following the aforementioned de Certeau’s conceptualisation of tactics/strategies). From a temporal perspective, such staged mobilities are paced, and through mobility, people pace their surroundings. As noted above, the design and planning of a car-dependent mobility system has had much to do with pacemaking the contemporary street (see section 3.1.2). Such pacemaking practices are visible in the day-to-day mobility, both as the set regulations and material forms of the space, which set the frame in which the driving practice takes place in, together with the subjective driving practices and route knowledges, where such set-from-the-above regulative frames are practiced in situ, and sometimes also challenged. In other words, the driver embeds rhythm to space through their embodied practice (the driver-car assemblage), which movement is simultaneously paced by environmental feedback, including the interactional flow of the traffic.

This interaction between the subjective driving practice, and the regulated traffic system one drives in, was evident beyond the route narratives as well: the driving practice itself, and moving as part of the flow of traffic, suggested an outlook on driving as something that happened in a continuous interaction with other cars (or in the absence of them). In one occasion, for example, the driver/informant stopped the car on a stretch of a four-lane street to provide me a clearer view to a construction site he had pointed out moments earlier, after checking there was no traffic in front or behind us, clearly rupturing the regulated and intended uses of the street, which in the case of other present traffic would have not have been ‘possible’ due to the pressure set by the flow of movement. In walking situations, such pressures of the traffic interactions were present much more limitedly, and confined to particular sites (such as a narrow shared pedestrian/bicycle lane in a boxed corridor next to an active construction site) – rather than the whole street network, as in driving – although here, in contrast, other kinds of interactions were possible (such as brief close-quarter gazes between passing people, quick reworkings of movement on narrow sidewalks in passing-by situations, physical bumping-ins, encountering a

face-to-face campaigner abruptly). The driving practice takes place in a continuous mobile relation with the environment and, in specific, other drivers. Here, the pacing of the (continuous) movement connects to the route as linear project with a distinctive arc – a beginning, an ending, and different sections in between – that are (partially) differentiated through the presence/absence of other car traffic.

Like with the walking data, the analysis themes presented here are not considered as definitive ones, but rather as one way of approaching the difficult-to-capture everyday experience of the driving practice and the body-environment relations on a day-to-day route. The interview event, together with the methods used, affects the way the route is presented and talked about. The specific problem with the driving interviews, as a method, should also be noted here: the car routes, in contrast to walking routes, are rather difficult to pin-point to the (quite small) central areas of the cities. The routes are, thus, not necessarily optimal for the interests of the research, as the time spend in the urban areas are limited here, but do provide valuable insight to the place-making and rhythm-making of the contemporary street space.

The analysis could be further improved and deepened by similar means as the walking routes (see section 4.2.1). Continued data gathering process would, undoubtedly, provide a broader and more nuanced view to the driving routes, the experiences of being in motion, and the habitual and recurring body-environment relations; and the analysis process itself could also be further expanded and connected to other approaches, including ones with a more spatial (road, street types), temporal (day, seasons), or subjective (route as part of the daily life) focuses.