WALKING RHYTHMS (ARTICLE #01)

The first article examined the rhythmic body-environment relations on day-to-day walking routes. The research question here was, as formulated above (see section 1.3), what kind of temporal patterns and repetitions structure body-environment relations on habitual urban routes? The article examined how different kinds and levels of temporalities weave together the body and the environment in the context of the familiar, repeating walking route.

The studied walking routes utilize a variety of different kinds of public spaces, such as sidewalks, shared pedestrian/bicycle paths, bridges over highways, gravel paths in parks, pedestrian passageways next to car-heavy streets, and staircases in points of elevation. More informal paths are also used, such as the inner yards of apartment blocks and ‘backdoor’-kind-of alleyways between buildings. As part of the assigned photography task (see section 3.2.1), the informants photographed pathways, scenic vistas, specific buildings, popular and livable, or ’empty’, areas passed by, and environmental details that in a way or another had become relevant for them, such as sites of past experiences, points of frustration in relation to obstructed movement, aesthetically interesting sceneries or environmental details, or just something that had caught their interest.³⁶

36 Sometimes photos were also taken of things that were not there, especially in the case of social interactions and encounters, which interestingly, did not come up as strongly in the data as one might assume, which might be due to the limitations of the interview as a method. It also somewhat calls

In the closer analysis of the walking route narratives, four distinctive themes were identified in how the route was ‘introduced’ (in the interview context) (see Appendix 13). The theme (1) event/interaction refers to the various interactions between the body and the socio-material environment, including encounters and temporary interactions with both the social and material elements during the walk, the knowledges needed to navigate through particular sites (material obstacles; crowds;

busy intersections), and how the familiar route might have changed temporarily due to a street maintenance site or the like. In the interviews, phrases such as ‘this is the place where always’, ‘usually, here you can find’, or ‘here, you don’t often see’ were often repeated. Here, environmental temporalities are ‘interpreted’ in relation to one’s own functional/goal-oriented movement on the route. (2) Path/embodied refers to the embodied practices and routines, feelings of motion, the effects of environmental conditions on one’s movement (such as weather, schedules, feeling-of-hurry), and the use of headphones or other similar technologies that are used to alter one’s perceptions of the environment. These issues relate to the habitual practices of the walk, and how one ‘inscribes’³⁷ ones subjective movement in it. (3) Project/knowledge refers to the route as a whole between the two (or more) points that are connected by it, and to the knowledges related to what happens (usually) during the route, including the practices of orientation: known obstacles, detours, or points of (expected) frictional encounters. These route knowledges were evident through the naming of the streets and passed-by locations, and through noting the distinctive areas or districts on the route. Here, the body-environment temporalities are ‘set’:

scheduled, timed and internalized. (4) Landscape refers to the (mostly visual) perception-based relations with the environment, such as subjective memories and the multitude of different relations one has with particular spaces or buildings (such as walking past previous homes or work places), the (multisensory) aesthetics of the environment, and the way the sites’ users and uses, are ‘perceived’ (as a backdrop or a stage) when the site is passed by or moved through.

The four themes work in two different kinds of temporal scales: the immediate and the mediated. The first two themes – ‘event/interaction’, ‘path/embodied’ – highlight the experience of movement during the walk, where the temporal connections take more immediate forms, unfolding in situ. These relations also include the small-scale (un)expected events on the walks: such as slightly bumping

Jensen 2013: 74–77). In a routine context, the social encounters and interactions might not be central to the mobile script of the route, or at least how it is introduced in such a research setting.

37 Edensor (2010) also uses the term but more in relation to the formation of dominant rhythms and

into a passer-by, negotiating movements in intersections or in narrow passageways, or unexpectedly encountering a face-to-face campaigner, as each experienced during the go-along interviews. These immediate-level issues were often brought up during the actual walk in the two-part interview, which – through being in the environment and in the embodied situation – facilitated such fleeting and difficult-to-grasp body-environment relations to emerge. It highlights the aforementioned non-representational elements of movement, and how, through going to the field, the interview event can gain depth and insight to issues that are not on the front of the more vocalised narratives about the route. In contrast, the two latter themes –

‘project/knowledge’, ‘landscape’ – relate to the more mediated knowledges that are more easily reflected upon and communicated to others (e.g. in a ‘traditional’

interview setting). These were also issues that were brought up in the route maps as noted and anticipated (physical) elements of the route. These knowledges have been build up through repeated interactions, experiences and (different) spatial uses, and internalised and reflected upon.

This divide, of course, is a crude one, as are the definitions of the four themes above. They should not be understood as definitive frames but rather as means to unpack the temporal character of the route (see Article #01 for detailed description of the themes): to provide some insight to how everyday routes in the city are practiced, and how the environment is both ‘read’ (de Certeau 1990/2013) and

‘dwelled-in-motion’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) during the habitual routine walk. They help to make some distinction between issues that are more on the front of the walking practice and it’s (embodied) experience (immediate and difficult-to-communicate) and those that are more acknowledged and easily communicated (mediated, representational), as well as between issues that are more individual and subjective notions of the environment, and in contrast, which are more shared and collective.

In a short summary, the article’s focus was set on how people both inscribe their own movement in the space, and simultaneously, and in continuous interactive relation with the space, read the events around them. The analysis highlights that the walking practice is acted out in a three-way dialogue of rhythmic route-body-environment relations. To use Lefebvre’s (1992/2013) terms, people work in relation to the noise of the city, and make sense of it through their own (routine) movements.

Michel de Certeau (1990/2013) notes that people use their own ‘tactics’ (as embodied practices) against the set backdrop of top-down ‘strategies’ (regulation, social relations, material forms) to inscribe their own routes to the complex network of connections and trajectories, or what could be here regarded as urban

assemblages. (See also Middleton 2009; 2011.) These temporal ‘tactics’ are most evident in the brief moments of embodied play (Stevens 2007) – mostly as micro-scale interactions with street furniture – or as informal movements, where the space is used to move in other than the regulated or intended ways – such as utilizing various shortcuts (that are temporarily available). For example, one of the informants noted a middle-school yard that she uses to go through to cut the travel distance a little, but only during the times that the school is out when she considers it possible, or at least more appropriate. Brandon LaBelle (2010: 93) writes that body movements are negotiated with the surroundings: ‘The sidewalk throbs with life, and the walker - - beats back.’ This is not an active struggle but something that has formed into a habitual, expected and ‘known’ set of relations and practices. It is about the skills and knowledges one has to use in order to work in given time-space conditions, and to connect one’s own uses of the space to the rhythms of street, such as finding and avoiding bottlenecks of movement, utilizing shortcuts, preferring aesthetically or otherwise more enjoyable paths, or about the feelings of familiarity (as all brought up in the research data). Only when this physical or social familiarity is changed (through construction sites, cultural events, or larger redevelopment processes and the redrawing of the street grid) – as set-from-the-above urban ‘strategies’ – the negotiation of ones movements in relation to the surroundings becomes more prominent (see also Edensor 2011).

What the analysis highlights in general is that, even though the particular embodied context of the route – the route as a specific timespace project – is connected to, and overlaps with, other spatiotemporal contexts, these spaces along the route are mostly performed through the overdriving functional and goal-oriented – contextualised – movement. In other words, the way urban spaces are interacted and engaged with is dictated by the mobile ‘project’. The informants brought up that they seldomly have the opportunity to stop and take part in any events or social happenings in the public, or to go shopping or to grab a coffee on the way home from work (if it is not already part of the ‘project’) as other daily schedules, needs and (family and work related) responsibilities set ‘constraints’ (Hägerstrand 1970) for the movement and spatial uses.

The main findings here do not convey the walking experience on the habitual route fully in any meaning of the word. The angle the phenomenon is approached, the used methods, and the interview moment, all have a major effect on what kind of issues are, or can be, conveyed and put on the forefront in the conceptualization of the walks. The introduce-me-to-your-route premise of the research surely highlights such introductory elements of the narratives, rather than capturing the

(uncapturable) ‘present’ or ‘everyday experience’. Many things are left unspoken, and the overall problem of reflection in relation to the everyday (and its representation) remains here central.

Nonetheless, the analysis of the walking interview helps us to understand the ways in which the urban environment is engaged with in a routine and recurring walking route context. The study could further be developed through a continued inquiry on the repeated routes through further interviews, which potentially could give a more nuanced view to the routes on each additional round of interviews (with the same informants), or by including more people and routes in the interviews to provide more variability. The seasonal effects could also be examined – the data was collected during the summer-time which surely affects the ways in which the walking practices, as well as the environments, are conducted and assembled. The analysis process could also be further expanded to include other approaches – and to answer different research questions – than the basic content analysis used here, including connecting the narratives to different street types and hierarchies (Marshall 2005) to draw a more spatially relevant perspective between the routes and the experiences, or by examining more closely the organization of the informants daily life, and how the route plays a part in it as a single piece in the larger whole (see Jiron 2010).