SITE RHYTHMS (ARTICLE #04)

Continuing from the material ‘dissection’ of the routes above, the next relevant question was: what kind of temporal socio-material interactions and appropriations take place in mobile events? Here, the interest was set on the elements of the urban mobile assemblage, and how they are formed through the practices, interactions and encounters of (mobile) bodies, and the embodied relations with the physical environment. Here, in specific, the question of spatiotemporal appropriation of the mobile event is a relevant question: as John Allen (1999: 60) writes, ‘each part of the day, and indeed each part of the week, gives way to the next as groups displace one another or compete for the same space.’ As the temporalities and body-environments can be seen as multiple and heterogeneous in the subjective route contexts, the argument here was that the mobile event itself is also multiple and heterogeneous, forming through the ongoing process of negotiation and appropriation of the street by a heterogeneous group of bodies in motion.

Focusing on six mobility sites, the analysis turned to the local rhythmicities and intersubjective place-making and rhythm-making processes. From the narratives, six sites were selected that could generally be either described as paths or nodes (following Lynch 1960). The (mostly) qualitative analysis of the recorded site observation videos

(see section 3.2.2) focused on what kind of rhythmic embodied practices, social interactions and encounters, regulations and materialities of the site – polyrhythmia – are produced as part of the daily mobile event. It also examined the different micro-practices related to the (re)negotiation of the (mobile) uses of the space, highlighted, in specific, by the changes of the time of the day, and the liminal temporalities in specific, which enabled more perceived flexibility in the assemblage of the mobile event, and the site in general.

Next to the analysis of the ‘place-ballets’ (Seamon 1980) of the mobility sites that aimed to understand the patterns and mobile elements of the sites in depth, the analysis examined what kind of interactions between people and the materialities of the site took place. Four larger themes were here identified: elements of embodied movements (as body-technology relations), the role of different time-space edges (as

‘in and exits’ between the public space and other [semi-]private spaces, changes from one movement mode to another), socio-material interactions, and negotiations of spaces and mobile patterns (see Appendix 15), of which the latter two became the most interesting and prominent themes, and which were examined closer in the article (see Article #04).

Interactions were identified both in motion and in more fixed forms. Most of the interactions related to movement practices between different mobile users, which were highlighted by the intersections found on each observed site that was the catalyst for much of the (visible and audible) interactions. The intersection both gathers people together momentarily (to wait), and manages inter-crossing movements between different mobility modes through regulation and symbols (see also section4.2.3). It can produce frictional micro-encounters, and it is also a site where different social norms and cultural codes are habitually utilised in how the mobile choreographies are organised and carried out. Different social encounters and interactions in mobile groups also took frequently place here, as the break in movement provided time and space for more focused interactions. The analysis made use of the concept of pacemakers (Mulíček et al. 2014) that refers to different sources that create temporal frameworks for specific places: certain overriding place-rhythms that are central in the definition of the temporal characteristics of a particular site. Here, the intersections acted as micro-pacemakers (Ibid.) at the sites, producing distinctive rhythms and potentials for interactions in relation to the more or less stable movement flows through the sites. Other material interactions, beyond the habitual movement practices, were limited, mostly brought up by different playful and informal practices, such as using the various street furniture as

environmental ‘props’ (Stevens 2007: 178), or as physical barriers that reconfigured ones movement at the scene, such as building sites and closed-off sidewalks.

Another point of interest in the analysis were the different spatial and temporal negotiations of the mobility patterns: the micro-practices that are used to challenge spatial or temporal orders, and to claim space (momentarily) through embodied practices. Following Kärrholm (2007), embodied practices – or the body in general – can be considered as (temporal) practices through which spaces are momentarily appropriated – such as through sitting, ‘hanging out’ or movement practices. From a movement perspective, such practices are mostly adaptive by character: they are means to manage the mobile body-environment relations amidst the ‘staged’ (Jensen 2013) urban environment – such as jay-walking, driving on the sidewalk, or cutting corners. These aspects were most visible during the early or late hours of the day when the ‘pressures’ of the city give away (see van Liempt et al. 2014), providing more room for such alternative takes on the mobile patterns (see below). The above-noted playful behaviour also challenges the instrumentality of the street space, what could be called ‘resistant rhythms’ (Edensor 2010: 16). The different longer and more stationary uses of the sites – that renegotiate the spatial uses and choreographies more prominently – related mostly to work-tasks, waiting practices, elements of night-time economy (NTE), or sitting and hanging-out practices (in both formal and informal seating configurations).

The article highlighted differences between the daytime spaces and what is here called the ‘twilight spaces’, or the dawn and dusk hours, situated between the distinctive day and night modes of the city (on the differences between the day and the night modes of the city, see e.g. Williams 2008; Gallan and Gibson 2011; Melbin 1978a). The research data was collected during different times of the day in order to examine how the rhythmicities of the site are affected by the time of the day – especially the changing volumes of activity in and through it. In the observation, the differences between the temporal modes of the city distilled mostly to the apparent spatial ‘looseness’ (Franck and Stevens 2007) of the twilight spaces, in relation to the

‘tighter’ form of the day-time space. The differences mostly appeared from two perspectives: the flexibility of the space due to the increase/decrease of movements and users (motor traffic in specific) and the lesser impact of the controlling social gaze (Foucault 1975/2005), and the possibility for various spatial appropriations (as noted above) of space due to this increasing flexibility during the early mornings and late evenings.

During the twilight hours, in other words, the environmental ‘affordances’

(Gibson 1979) are more flexible and varying in relation to spatial uses, and, thus, the

emergence of alternative mobility rhythms. Such ‘crepuscular mobility rhythms’ – as titled in the article – convey more variation and flexibility in the mobility patterns of the sites. During different times, the elements of the mobility sites – the flows, points of interactions, collective pacemakers, and spatial uses – are assembled differently, (re)transforming the space and its ‘temporal architecture’ (Osman and Mulíček 2017), although following a similar general frame in relation to their day-time counterparts. The observation data also brings up how the change from more or less steady movement flows of the day-time into the singular pedestrians or cars found during the early or late hours, changes the role of the mobile subject in the making of both the site’s material form and atmosphere, making a singular body a distinctive marker: or, flows become events.

Together with the analytical interest on the assemblage of the ‘ordinary’ mobility site, the article also discussed the applicability of video-as-a-method in site observation situations, and in the process of ‘recording rhythm’. As Lefebvre (1992/2013: 45) noted, urban rhythms as such are not recordable, but in the study of mobility rhythms, the use of video – and the ability to manipulate time – provides tools for examining various chains-of-events, temporal relations, and heterogeneous uses of the sites in ways that ‘traditional’ site observations relaying only on the perceptions of the researcher, cannot achieve. Here, though, the problematic issues of framing as well as representational issues related to any video material (as a produced representation) have to be noted in the research process (see also section 3.3). The video (with sound) also produces vast amounts of data, which can highlight issues related to the difficulty of finding the appropriate level of analysis, and the relevance of the posed questions for the data in relation to the level of analysis.

Again, as above, the results of the analysis are not definitive or exclusive, but rather give insight to the temporal and rhythmic processes of the everyday mobility sites. It highlights the way the mobility site is (re)created through each individual embodied trajectory, one person claiming space for a brief movement through the embodied mobile practices, and with a possibility for variation and alternative takes that are, in specific, provided by the more flexible, loose and ‘permissive’ liminal hours of the day where the continuous pressures of the traffic, as well as the social gaze, give away. Here, the embodied appropriation of space is rhythmic and temporal, and an essential part of the assembly of the mobility site.

5 DISCUSSION