Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 11, No.

6, September 2010

Sense and the city: exploring the embodied geographies of urban walking
Jennie Middleton
Department of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK, jennie.middleton@plymouth.ac.uk
Within UK pedestrian policy, walking is promoted as a sustainable mode of transport that benets both the body and mind. However, much policy discussion assumes all walking to be the same and a largely self-evident means of transport, whilst many academic engagements with walking are highly abstract theorisations that lack any systematic empirical exploration of actual pedestrian practices. As such, there is little that unpacks the experiences of those who navigate, negotiate, and traverse the city streets in their day-to-day lives. In contrast, this paper aims to situate and understand the practice of everyday walking in the unfolding experiences of urban pedestrians. Walking is positioned and understood as a socio-technical assemblage that enables specic attention to be drawn to the embodied, material and technological relations and their signicance for engaging with everyday urban movements on foot. The analysis draws upon in-depth interview and walking photo diary data from participants in the inner London boroughs of Islington and Hackney. Particular analytic attention to the different styles and conventions of urban walking and how these are intimately linked to bodily senses and the materiality of the city provides an opportunity for creating an increased engagement between urban and pedestrian policy and urban and social theory. Key words: walking, senses, embodiment, the city, pedestrian policy.

Introduction
In recent years walking has been attracting a considerable amount of policy and public interest. Signicant policy publications include the UK Walking and Cycling: An Action Plan (Department for Transport 2004) and the Capitals Walking Plan for London (Transport for London 2004). What was once a relatively marginalised activity promoted by specialist

interest groups including The Ramblers (formerly known as The Ramblers Association) and Living Streets (formerly known as the Pedestrian Association), is now gaining signicant attention through mass media and numerous public events.1 The dominant focus of this growing policy and public interest is the promotion of walking as a healthy and sustainable mode of transport. Nevertheless, this emphasis on walking for tness often

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/10/060575-22 q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2010.497913

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Jennie Middleton Benjamin 1983; de Certeau 1984; Rossiter and Gibson 2003), however, many of these are characterised by a lack of any systematic empirical exploration of the actual practice of walking. As such, this paper aims to situate and understand the practice of everyday walking in the often neglected, unfolding, and unremarkable2 experiences of urban pedestrians. McGrath, Reavey and Brown point out in the context of mental health and people who live with persistent anxiety:
Whilst it is relatively straightforward to understand the contents of experience as multiple and possibly contradictory, it is considerably more challenging to see that experience is equally affective, spatial, embodied, material, technological and so on . . . The difculty is to keep this multiplicityboth difference and irreducibilitycentral to the analysis without prioritising one set of planes over another. (2008: 57)

obscures what could be considered the less remarkable, unspectacular, and unreported everyday experiences associated with walking. As Cresswell seeks to develop a politics of mobility he suggests that mobility can be conceived of as an entanglement of movement, representation, and practice (2010: 17). He highlights that whilst transport research has developed ways of telling us about the fact of movement, how often it happens, at what speeds, and where, little attention has been paid in these arenas to not only representations of mobility but how mobility is embodied and practiced (2010: 19). Much of the transport research that informs pedestrian policy discussion assumes walking to be a homogeneous and largely self-evident means of getting from one place to another. Cresswell moves on to highlight how in addition to being a traceable and mappable physical movement which is encoded through representation, walking is also an embodied practice that we experience in ways that are not wholly accounted for by either their objective dimensions or their social and cultural dimensions (2010: 20). Some of the most recent and insightful engagements with embodied experiences of moving on foot have tended to privilege leisure walking in the context of conceptualising landscape (see Macpherson 2009; Solnit 2000; Wylie 2005); walking as a means of exploring peoples relationships with, and knowledges of, the natural environment (Lorimer and Lund 2008); or artistic walking practices as a mode of apprehending the city (see Pile 2005; Pinder 2001, 2005), as opposed to what could be considered more mundane urban walking practices such as the journey to work (although see Vergunst 2008 for accounts of walking in the city and the countryside in north-east Scotland). Walking also features in writings within urban and social theory (see Amin and Thrift 2002;

Elsewhere attention has been drawn to how time, space and place are sensually and emotionally apprehended, and are important concerns for understanding everyday walking practices (see Middleton 2009). This paper seeks to extend the focus of analysis to other planes of experience drawing specic attention to embodied, material and technological relations and their signicance for engaging with urban pedestrian experiences. As such, throughout the following discussion, walking is positioned and understood as a sociotechnical assemblage as a means of keeping the social and the material on the same explanatory plane (Jacobs, Cairns and Strebel 2007: 626; see also Latour 2005a, 2005b). The research upon which this paper is based is rst situated within a broader policy context and in relation to wider theoretical literatures. The embodied rhythmic experiences of moving on foot is then engaged with in terms of the

Sense and the city different styles and conventions of urban walking, how these are intimately linked to the bodily senses, and the ways in which these relate to a sense of place. In Bissells (2008) exploration of the embodied experiences of vision and visual practices in the context of rail travel, it is highlighted that although senses are not discrete, different sensory experiences might be intensied at different times (2008: 44). Whilst acknowledging the multisensual nature of embodied experiences, the argument presented here is that it is the intensication of certain senses at certain times that makes us aware of corporeal planes of experience. In other words, an analytic distinction is drawn between the embodied and the sensory by paying specic attention to how the senses interrupt and mediate everyday walking practices. The discussion then moves on to examine the ways in which walking can be positioned and understood as a socio-technical assemblage by highlighting the signicance of mediating mundane technologies (Michael 2000) such as shoes, clothing and luggage, within the embodied, spatial and temporal rhythms of pedestrian movement. It is argued that understanding how these material mediations or objects, as already in relation to the situational accomplishment of walking, is essential for engaging with the complexity of peoples experiences of the urban environment on foot. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of engaging with the complexity of the experiences of pedestrians in gaining a greater understanding of urban walking practices. It is suggested that by drawing particular analytic attention to the embodied dimensions of urban walking and how these are intimately linked to bodily senses and the materiality of the city provides an opportunity for creating an increased engagement between urban and pedestrian policy and urban and social theory.

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Pedestrian ponderings

policy

and

peripatetic

It has been argued within policy, and some academic arenas, that there is a lack of appropriate data on walking in terms of pedestrian environments, activities and behaviours (Brog and Erl 2001; Desylass, Duxbury, Ward and Smith 2003; Gemzoe 2001). Much current walking policy is informed by travel data such as the National Travel Survey (Department for Transport 2008, 2009) or localised pedestrian counts. Whilst these types of data go some way in examining the frequency of walking, there is nothing relating to the types of environments in which pedestrian activities take place, their geographical variance, and the meaning and signicance of journeys on foot to different groups and individuals. For as Gemzoe highlights in the context of research on the pedestrianisation of Copenhagen: one of the key factors in understanding the complexity of areas for walking is that there is much more to walking than walking . . . Numbers alone are not an indication of the quality of a place (2001: 20). Following Gemzoes concerns, there have been several policy attempts to engage with more in-depth understandings of walking in the policy arena. For example, Gehl Architects were commissioned by Transport for London and the Central London Partnership (CLP) to conduct a Public Spaces and Public Life study in London. Their nal report, entitled Towards a Fine City for People: Public Spaces and Public Life London (Gehl Architects 2004), details empirical ndings drawn from pedestrian counts and surveys from which recommendations are made surrounding public space and the pedestrian and cycling environments in London. Although there is a distinct emphasis

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Jennie Middleton Solnit 2000; Wylie 2005). In the academic arena there has also been an increasing amount of research exploring the relationship between walking and the built environment (see, for example, Cervero and Radisch 1996; Crane and Crepeau 1998; Leyden 2003; Lund 2002; Sisiopiku and Akin 2003). However, much of this new urbanist and transport studiesinformed research also positions the practice of walking as self-evident and instrumental whilst neglecting the actual experiences of urban pedestrians and the multiplicity associated with those experiences. The relationship between walking and the city has been conceptualised in numerous different ways. For example, urban theory and research has increasingly drawn upon walking, or the tradition of anerie (see Benjamin 1983), as a means of understanding the urban. The concept of the aneur originated in the work of the French poet Charles Baudelaire and revolves around the concept of a gazing, male individual wandering through the public spaces of the city in a detached, ironic manner. For some it is through focusing on these peripatetic movements that makes it possible to read and increase our understanding of cities (although see Scalway 2006; Simonsen 2004; Wolff 2006 for feminist critiques of the aneur). Walking has thus been a medium for various writers and artists to engage with the city (see, for example, Phillips 2005; Pile 2005; Pinder 2001, 2005; Rendell 2006). Such instances might include walking the streets in order to study the citys everyday rituals and habits, or to emphasise the sensory and sensual dimensions of urban life. Urban walking has also been situated within discussions concerning the democratic and civilising possibilities of city spaces. For example, in the 1960s Jane Jacobs wrote the hugely inuential book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs 1972), which

on the importance of people and how they use different urban spaces within a specic local scale at particular times, the overall focus is on urban design and the quality of the urban environment. As such, there is little that engages with the actual practice of walking in terms of its many types and forms, what it means to different people, and the multiplicity of those experiences. Subsequent research commissioned by Transport for London (2008) focuses much more explicitly on walking behaviour and the motivations and barriers to pedestrian movement. However, much of this policy-commissioned research assumes walking is a homogeneous and largely self-evident means of getting from one place to another. As such, the very practice of walking is positioned as a functional, easily understandable mode of transport people just do and to this end the ways in which walking is understood and engaged with is essentialised as a self-evident activity. Concerns with walking also extend to academic writings. For example, Bassett highlights how walking as a fundamental human activity and way of interacting with the environment, has attracted the attentions of poets, essayists, artists, philosophers and social theorists and points to the work of Solnit (2000) for a panoramic survey of this breadth of work (Bassett 2004: 398) (see also Careri 2002). Ingold has drawn specic attention to how walking was transformed in the nineteenth century from a mode of transport for the poor, the criminal, the young, and above all, the ignorant (2004: 322) to an elite leisure activity strongly inuenced by the wanderings of Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. It can be argued that an engagement with these forms of poetic leisure walking still dominates much current work concerning pedestrian practices (see, for example, Edensor 2000;

Sense and the city stresses the importance of streets and sidewalks to the unplanned interaction of strangers, and the role these interactions play in maintaining safe urban areas. Sennett (1970, 1990) also wrote about the nature of encounters between strangers when walking and negotiating public space in the city. He proposed that the social heterogeneity of public urban spaces offers unpredictable encounters that are democratic and civilising. However, the emancipatory potential and democratic possibilities of urban walking are far from straightforward and unproblematic as much of the literature on walking in the city is imbued with a degree of romanticism whereby walking is often considered, without question, as a positive urban practice. For example, the work of French social theorist, Michel de Certeau (1984), frames walking as a form of urban emancipation that opens up a range of democratic possibilities. de Certeau rejects the notion that pedestrians are shaped by urban space and control and explores walking as a mode of political resistance. He distinguishes between the strategies of the powerful in their production of space and the tactics of pedestrians who disrupt the rational plan of the city. However, such work that situates walking in the context of everyday urban practices can be argued as presenting highly abstract renderings of pedestrian movement, where the actual practice of walking is often obscured. For example, as Morris revisits de Certeaus chapter on Walking in the City in his seminal text on The Practice of Everyday Life, he explores a range of differentiated practices of walking and their related contexts that include a casino-entertainment complex, a central city walking trail designed to memorialise indigenous-colonial relations, and a televised gay and lesbian parade (2004: 676) in order to explore the multiplicities of urban walking. However,

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what fails to emerge in this piece that addresses what we talk about when we talk about walking in the city (Morris 2004: 675) is just that; accounts of that very practice. There is little in the work of those theorists, such as de Certeau, that engages with the people that walk and their actual routine, habitual and daily pedestrian experiences in the city. Therefore, it can be argued that both pedestrian policy and academic writings have yet to adequately address the everyday walking experiences of those who navigate, negotiate, and traverse the city streets in their day-to-day lives. This paper seeks to address this gap in the analysis of accounts of moving on foot that formed part of a wider study on urban walking in London. Empirical data addressing such concerns is not only important for disrupting the self-evident way walking is positioned within transport policy but in providing an alternative means for engaging with abstract, theoretical renderings of pedestrian movement and practices.

Research setting and analytic approach

This study had three principal aims: rst, to explore the relationship between walking and the built environment; second to examine the many different types, forms and characters of walking; nally to engage with the social dimensions of urban pedestrian movement. These research aims were interrogated across a transect through the inner London boroughs of Islington and Hackney. The transect started with Barnsbury in the west, moving eastwards through Canonbury, De Beauvoir Town and then London Fields. Part of the rationale for selecting this transect was due to the variation it displayed in terms of the built environment and social factors such as levels of wealth and social deprivation (on neighbourhoods in this

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Jennie Middleton diary-interview method (see also Young and Barrett 2001). As Latham explores how the performative ethos can inform and invigorate the human geographic imagination (2003: 1993), concerns are raised relating to how embodied social practices are researched (see Jones 2005 and Spinney 2006, 2009 on cycling). It is proposed as methodologically and analytically troubling that talk is made to stand in for all the complexities and subtleties of embodied practice and how the cultural geographer canit would appearspeak the world to truth through asking her or his research subjects the right questions, and then quoting them back with delity in their research reports (Latham 2003: 1999). Degen raises comparable concerns in the context of exploring the sensory politics of urban environments; when talking to people about the character and sensory make-up of places there was something that could not be quantied merely through words or descriptions (2008: 13). However, if discursive data are not positioned as representing some external reality, something that it could be argued that Latham and similar work are inadvertently doing, then reexive accounts of experience are of particular signicance for understanding mobile practices. In understanding all representations as mediated in some way, it is possible to overcome issues associated with representing non-cognitive realms of the body (Latham 2003: 2000), as situated peoples are persistently representing their worlds, full of events, contents, joys and sorrows, problems and possibilities, to themselves and to others around them (Laurier and Philo 2006: 355). For example, in-depth interviews provide a resource for understandings of pedestrian movement to be framed and discussed within a specic context. Perhaps more importantly, interviews have the potential to make visible

transect see Butler and Robson 2003; Butler and Rustin 1996). This variation enabled the exploration of the signicance of walking in the lives of different groups of people (see Middleton 2008 for discussion of these issues). The study drew upon a mixed-method approach including a postal survey, experiential walking photo diaries, and in-depth interviews. The data being discussed in this paper are from the diary and interview accounts produced by thirty-ve participants recruited from a thousand postal surveys. The diary task involved participants providing details of their walking patterns by noting down the date, time, how long and where they walked, for one consecutive week. In other words, they spatialised their experience of time on foot by producing personalised time-space budgets in the diaries. It was then up to the individual what else they recorded but suggestions included: why were they walking, was it choice or necessity; what was it like where they were walking and what did they feel; who were they walking with or who have they encountered whilst walking; and how are they walking (fast, leisurely, slowly, walking the dog?). The task of recording the time-space budgets was something each participant did with ease and consistency, yet a tension emerged between these recorded movements and the accompanying accounts making it possible to question whether walking, time and space are experienced in such linear terms (see Middleton 2009). A disposable camera was also given to each diary participant to take photographs of anything that struck them as signicant or interesting (see Johnsen, May and Cloke 2008 on autophotography in research on geographies of homelessness). These were then used as a discussion prompt in the followup interviews, a method referred to by Zimmerman and Wieder (1977) as the diary,

Sense and the city how participants themselves make sense of their mobile practices on foot and the meanings that emerge as part of articulating such understandings. For as Mason and Davies argue: talking about and describing sensory things is part of everyday parlance and there is much evocative vocabulary available (2009: 595). Furthermore, particular analytic attention can also be given to the discursive organisation of how the interviewees and diarists account for their experiences as urban pedestrians. It is by engaging with the discursive organisation of the interview and diary accounts (see Edwards 1997; Potter 2004) that makes it possible to avoid essentialising the practice of walking as selfevident in line with calls to abandon essentialist understandings of mobility (see, for example, Cresswell and Dixon 2002). Rather, the discursive analysis of ways in which accounts are organised by participants makes visible both the multi-sensuality of embodied experiences on foot and emergent relations between the senses and the spatio-temporal patterns of walking. The socio-technical assemblages of urban walking can thus be understood as part of a set of planes that are thoroughly interdependent with social and spatial experiences (McGrath, Reavey and Brown 2008: 58).

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Sensory, sensual and embodied experiences in urban walking

There has been much written in recent years concerning different peoples embodied and sensual urban experiences. In a recent special issue of Senses and Society, Adams and Guy reect on this growth of research as they point out how the role of the senses in shaping our urban experience is developing rapidly across the disciplines (2007: 133). These concerns

with how the sensual experience of everyday life is sensorially mediated through hearing, smell, touch, taste, as well as sight are reected in what has been described as the emerging eld of sensescapes. For example, within the Senses and Society special issue, Adams et al. (2007) draw upon this multisensory approach as they explore residents sensorial experiences of the twenty-four-hour city in the city centres of Manchester, Shefeld, and the Clerkenwell area of London. They argue that the 24-hour city is a place rich with sensorial encounters and that these are highly signicant components of peoples everyday urban experience (2007: 201). The geographies of fear literature includes work that has explicitly engaged with distinct gendered mobility patterns and the spatial tactics that individuals adopt as they encounter/avoid/ negotiate fear whilst negotiating the urban environment (see, for example, Pain 2001; Valentine 1989, 1992). Womens embodied urban experiences are also engaged within the work of Longhurst (1996) on pregnant bodies, with queer experiences of urban space having being the focus of work on geographies of sexuality (Bell 2001; Brown 2008; Valentine 1993). Research within geographies of disability has drawn particular attention to the embodied experiences of people with physical impairments and the hostile built environments they confront in their everyday lives (Butler and Bowlby 1997; Gleeson 1999; Imrie 2000, 2003, 2006). In the context of mental illness, Parr (1999) has explored how mad behaviour is considered unacceptable in shared public space as opposed to designated spaces such as mental health centres where it is tolerated. Davidson (2000a, 2000b) has focused specically on women suffering from agoraphobia and their embodied spatial experiences and Moss and Dyck (2002) have engaged with the everyday lives of women

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Jennie Middleton What Georges account reveals is a relationship between walking, the senses, and place. George draws out how a certain sense of place emerges from pedestrian activities and the multitude of senses which pick up on [the] atmosphere of that place. He contrasts his claims to what can only be felt on foot with the alternative experience of travel by car or bus that lessens ones sensitivities to senses which pick up on atmosphere. Georges account identies that his experience of what he terms the atmosphere on a road or area is indeed multi-sensory as it is made up of hundreds of factors and details. However, his engagement in place is more than multisensory as his senses mediate the way in which he picks up on the atmosphere of a place. Feld and Basso argue that as place is sensed, senses are placed; as places make sense, senses make place (1996: 91). However, more is at stake. George draws specic attention to how the psycho-geography changes from street to street and can only be felt whilst walking. Psycho-geography can be understood as a means of engaging with, and often attempting to map, the ambiance and softer dimensions of the city. There is a strong tradition of psycho-geography that has developed from the Situationist movement (see Debord 1967; Pinder 1996; Wollen 1990) to more recent engagements in the work of Ian Sinclair (1997) in his walks around different areas of London. The Situationists considered the derive as a key dimension in the construction of the psycho-geography of a city whereby a drifting motion around and through the city represented a political statement against rational, ordered, capitalist urban space. However, as George marks the potential trouble of expressing himself within these particular frames of reference (I dont mean to sound mystical about this) he makes relevant the potential inappropriateness of such ideas for engaging

coping with chronic illness in urban spaces. However, in situating some of these writings, specically Parr (1999) and Davidson (2000a, 2000b), within the broader context of geographies of exclusion, McGrath, Reavey and Brown argue that the nature of experience is often essentialised. They suggest that rather than articulate experience as it is lived, they [sic] rmly locate experience in a higher order entityself or lived spacethat may not altogether adequately express the ongoing experiences of their participants (2008: 58). As such, what follows in this paper is an attempt to engage with the, often neglected, everyday experiences of urban pedestrians whilst drawing upon discursive analysis as a means of avoiding essentialising those very experiences in some higher order entity (McGrath, Reavey and Brown 2008: 58). As previously mentioned, the problematic nature of privileging one sense over another and that embodied experiences need to be understood as multi-sensory is widely recognised (Crary 1999; Degen, DeSilvey and Rose 2008; Ingold 2004; Pallasma 2005; Rodaway 1994; Saldanha 2002). Rather, the following account from this De Beauvoir Town resident highlights the multi-sensual dimensions of pedestrian movement and how the multisensualities of place are mediated through the ways in which people sense the world:
Walking allows one to really understand an area. Psycho-geography changes from street to street and this can only be felt on foot. I dont mean to sound mystical about this, the atmosphere on a road or area is made up of hundreds of factors and details which make up a local environment and moving through this space in a car or bus lessens ones sensitivities to senses which pick up on atmosphere. (DiaryGeorge, De Beauvoir Town resident, Hackney)

Sense and the city with the everyday urban walking practices that emerge from the experiences of the participants being discussed here. For as previously highlighted, it can be argued that many writings within urban and social theory often present highly abstract theorisations of walking in the city that are detached from most everyday urban pedestrian practices. Yet putting these over-theorised engagements with walking aside, whilst acknowledging all embodied experience as multi-sensory, how does exploring these sensual accounts contribute to understanding the embodied planes of experience of moving on foot? In the following diary extract, Paul reects on a particular journey to work one morning:
This morning I feel tired almost as soon as leaving the house, which doesnt bode well but I know theres only twenty minutes before I get to stop, so I persevere. And thats what a lot of urban walking is all about. Perseverance. And momentum. Momentum is vital. When crossing the road I try to do so without having to stop, without having to turn sharply, without having to break my stride, in the morning Im on autopilot, I can go for ages without even realising Im walking sometimes, I just point myself and go. My legs know which route theyre taking without too much input from me. Another part of the momentum is dodging without effort. Picking the racing line around corners, gliding round the edge of puddles and swinging out of the wake of the travelling cigarette. Its an annoyance. (DiaryPaul, Canonbury resident, Islington)

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itself be described as rhythmic as he points to how he races, glides and swings. However, particular salience lies in the role of his body in the account. In Pauls own words he stresses the importance of momentum and how this relates to his bodily movements such as how he is on autopilot and tries to maintain an unbroken stride in his movements. This account mirrors Lefebvres understanding of how rhythms converge on the body in the everyday (Horton 2005: 158). As Paul accounts for this momentum of his daily walking patterns he draws attention to what could be described as the auto-motive and habitual characteristics of those movements as he glides on autopilot and how he can go for ages without even realising Im walking sometimes. In Seamons writings concerning a phenomenology of everyday life, he argues for an engagement with a bodily intentionality called body-subject:
Body-subject is the inherent capacity of the body to direct behaviours of the person intelligently, and thus function as a special kind of subject which expresses itself in a preconscious way usually described by such words as automatic, habitual, involuntary, and mechanical. (1980: 155)

In the writings of Lefebvre (2004) on everyday life and rhythm, a signicant emphasis is placed on the role of the body in terms of how it serves as a metronome (Elden 2004: xii). The above account from Pauls diary can be argued to illustrate exactly that. Pauls poetic sensual description of his walk to work can

For as Hubbard elaborates; the implication here is that we do not have to think about the way we move through urban space: our body feels its way (2006: 119). It is possible to examine further Pauls account for how he makes visible and demonstrates such an embodied understanding. It is his legs that know which route theyre taking without too much input from me. Paul accounts for his walking directly in terms of the intentionality of his body. Seamon builds upon his notion of the body-subject with body-ballets where basic movements of body-subject fuse together into wider bodily patterns that

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Otherwise its a good way to contemplate. Not many other walkers around. Some women walking dogs, a couple of old boys on benches (alone). (DiaryDave, De Beauvoir Town resident, Hackney)

provide a particular end or need (1980: 158) and time-space routines which are a set of habitual bodily behaviours which extends through a considerable portion of time (1980: 158). Paul summates his claims concerning the embodied nature of walking for him as perseverance. And momentum. These are not arbitrary generalities. They are carefully dened in terms of his embodied practices of walking. Momentum is vital to such urban walking. It is what renders him skilled and practiced in his movements across urban space. But more than this, momentum is paired with perseverance, and perseverance is an issue of time. The interdependencies of momentum and perseverance are developed further in his descriptions of dodging without effort. The racing line is one that optimises time. Perseverance and momentum are how he congures what it is to be on autopilot where he can go for ages without even realising it. This is time-space routines (Seamon 1980). Thus, from Pauls account emerges a sensual aesthetic relating to the occasioned accomplishment of walking and an awareness of his body that waxes and wanes. It is possible to identify across the data where certain senses intensify or disappear as participants account for their walking practices. It is these interruptions or absences that emerge as signicant in the context of participants reporting of their walking experiences. As this next extract from a De Beauvoir Town residents diary also highlights the multi-sensual dimensions of walking, it is the visual and the auditory that are at issue:
Monday morning the bin men throw the contents of the bins into the road for picking up later. This makes things very unpleasant to look athalf the bags seem split. This route has many quiet sections which erupt into noise at the main roads, Kingsland Road, Hackney Road, Bethnal Green Road.

Sights and sounds interrupt what would otherwise be a good way to contemplate as Dave undertakes his walk on a Monday morning. They are positioned in this diary entry of his walk as intrusions on the way. The spilling of bin bag contents into the road for picking up later as littering and making things very unpleasant to look at. A variable soundscape (see Feld 2005 for overview of the notion of soundscape) also intrudes on ways that have quiet sectionsquiet in contrast with quiet sections which erupt into noise at the main roads, and quiet in terms of there not being many other walkers around. These sights and sounds are interruptions that mark the salience of walking as contemplative movement. Sound continues to emerge as a key theme throughout the diary and interview data. A signicant feature of these accounts is the variable ways in which participants attend to the presences and absences, or different qualities, of sound in their walking patterns. However, the threshold between non-cognitive and cognitive awareness of sound is also constitutive of the ways in which this next diarist accomplishes her journey on foot. Of particular relevance in this example is the regulation of what it is to walk safely in an urban environment:
I like walking to work on Sundays because the city and the Temple are so quiet. Chancery Lane is deserted. Its really good for thinking as you go. I make a list of things I need to do in my head as I walk along my road towards the bus stop. When Im on the bus, out of habit these days, I plug my iPod in. When I get off at Rosebury

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Avenue I leave it onI wouldnt normally do this, because you need to be able to hear whats going on around you, but I think its OK when theres no trafc around. I also think I wouldnt wear earphones in lots of parts of London where Im walking because it is effectively asking to be mugged. I enjoy the peace and quiet of my walk into work. (DiaryLucy, Canonbury resident, Islington)

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Lucy reports her preference for walking on Sundays in the city in terms of the relative quiet of deserted streets. The peace and quiet is both noteworthy and frames her further elaboration of how such tranquility provides a basis for her to contemplate and to forget her body. The signicance of her habitual use of the iPod is reportable precisely because it marks her attention to what it is to be aware of signicant changes of noise. She would not normally do this because you need to be able to hear whats going on around you. Being attentive to variations in terms of the presence and absence of sounds are constituted as a salient feature of her routine practices of walking. However, Lucy orients in another way to the signicance of what it is to have auditory awareness in an urban environment. She herself is accountable to others in relation to her relative awareness of sound in terms of how wearing earplugs signals her lack of awareness to others. Such inattentiveness would compromise her safety in parts of London in which she walksbecause it is effectively asking to be mugged. What each of these accounts illustrates is how pedestrians can become both aware and unaware of their bodies as they walk. As Feld explores the notion of acoustic space attention is drawn to Drew Leders The Absent Body (1990) and the question of why, if the body is so central to sensory experience, if it so actively situates the subject, might it also be

so experientially absent or out-if-focus (2005: 180). In the context of Leders concerns, Feld moves on to suggest that the presence and absence of the body also implicates the presence and absence of the senses and their continual shifting and interaction. For writers such as Simmel (1971), being unaware of the body, or the body shutting down, is a mechanism for urban dwellers/pedestrians to cope with the potential sensory overload of the city. It is therefore possible for urban spaces to be inhabited without necessarily being sensed as sensation, sensual presence, is still more, more than embodiment (Feld 2005: 181). There is thus an analytic distinction to be made between the embodied and the sensory. The above data not only provide an empirical engagement with these theoretical concerns but demonstrate how it is the senses that interrupt and mediate a bodily consciousness. In other words, similarly to how Bergson (1998 [1911]) argues that people become aware of time when they are made to wait (see Middleton 2009; Middleton and Brown 2005), the same argument holds in relation to people becoming aware of their corporeal planes of experience when senses intensify and disrupt the very ow of those experiences. The analysis throughout this paper emphasises the importance of how people use sensual talk in their accounts of their pedestrian experiences yet exploring these accounts has done more than reveal how people discursively attend to their actions. What also emerges is the salience of material objects in participants movements on foot. For example, clothing, footwear, iPods, and shopping are all referred to in the construction of participants accounts. Binnie et al. (2007) stress the importance of understanding mundane mobilities, such as walking, as heterogeneous assemblages of embodied practices, sensual knowledges, affectual

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Jennie Middleton techniques such as having the correct posture, taking shorter steps, and swinging your arms. The importance of wearing light and exible shoes is also stressed. Although it can be argued that footwear and clothing are the not the concerns of policy-makers, it is interesting to note that these aspects of pedestrian movement, what could be termed walking attire, are rarely engaged with beyond this brief mention in the Walking Works campaign. This absence directly contrasts with the data being discussed here, where footwear and clothing were particularly signicant features within peoples accounts of their walking patterns. There has been increasing attention to objects in the context of everyday movement such as train travel (Bissell 2007, 2009; Watts 2008) and mobile ofce work (Laurier 2004; Laurier and Philo 2003). Grosz argues that the body is the condition and context through which I am able to have a relation to objects (1994: (86) but how is this relationship to be understood in the context of everyday urban walking? In Latour and Herments (1998) photographic exploration of Paris: Invisible City, they focus on the countless techniques making Parisians lives possible and how this helps us to grasp the importance of ordinary objects, starting with the street furniture constituting part of inhabitants daily environment and enabling them to move about in the city without losing their way (1998: 1). They move on to point out that it is objects that keep life in the big city together (1998: 63) and emphasise that it is these beings with multiple but standardised forms which serve as so many couches, coat racks, affordances, signs, alerts and obstacles in the paths that each of us threads through the city. Far more than an indifferent frame around our subjective passionson the contrary, in fact they make all the difference between a

relations and spatio-temporal congurations. They also stress how we need to identify and examine the technologies and materialities of travel that are central to the production of mundane mobilities and remain attuned to the ways in which they offer different affordances and capacities (Binnie et al. 2007: 168 169). The analysis of the above material has drawn attention to how pedestrians account for and use what they take to be the signicance of what Michael (2000) terms mundane technologies. How can the embodied practices of walking be reassembled (Latour 2005b) such that the implications for the everyday practice of walking can be made sense of in some integrated manner? As such, further attention will now be paid to materiality in the context of the everyday experiences of urban walking.

Mundane technologies equipmentality of walking

and

the

In Transport for Londons (2004) Walking Plan for London specic attention is drawn to certain material objects and how they might inuence the pedestrian experiences of particular groups of people. For example, reference is made to how a person carrying luggage, a lot of shopping or with small children would benet from adequate clear space on pavements (2004: 26). These material objects are all framed in terms of how they have the potential to restrict mobility on foot in certain spaces and how the built environment can be designed to ease these restrictions. As the above discussion has begun to highlight, participants account for the signicance of material objects in their pedestrian movements. Recent walking campaigns such as Living Streets Walking Works have started to pay increasing attention to the body by giving advice on good walking

Sense and the city successful trip and a failure (1998: 65). It is by engaging with Latour and Herments perspective on the signicance of all objects, or multiple actors, in Parisians lives in the city, that it is possible to make connections between the built environment, materiality, embodied experiences on foot, and pedestrian policy in the context of urban walking. For example, Paul draws specic attention to the signicance of clothing for how he negotiates the city on foot:
Choosing the right attire for the walk to work is important, especially in summer when it can be sunny one moment, raining the next. Unfortunately, today I didnt. The shoes Im wearing today are a little too small for me. Which is a shame because I saw them in the shop, loved them; bought them. Boys dont do that. But I did and Im beginning to rue the day as, no matter how thin the socks, these shoes are patently too tight. (DiaryPaul, Canonbury resident, Islington)

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mundane technologies. In other words takenfor-granted technologies, such as shoes, that lack the novelty value of new technologies such as mobile phones, computers, iPods etc. He goes on to argue that despite these mundane technologies being:
intrinsic to our supposedly pure relations to the environment incorporating and expanding affordances . . . they are not simple means of conveyance, or conduits by which messages (dened as heterogeneous) pass from humans to nature and back again. They intervene and inuence these messages and they do so in heterogeneous ways. (Michael 2000: 115)

For Paul, choosing the right attire for the walk to work is important. This statement is qualied by providing an example of how today he didnt. In so doing, Paul attends to the importance of the right attire for his pedestrian experiences. Pauls account contains certain gender formulations produced in relation to his shoes. In positioning himself as beginning to rue the day that he partook in this form of shopping that boys dont do, he is making claims that this is something out of character and that his shopping habits should not be considered in relation to what he implies as a female trait of loved them; bought them. Boys dont do that. However, more is at issue here. As Michael critiques pure conceptions of the relations between bodies and environments he emphasises the signicance of technologies that mediate these relations (2000: 108). He refers to these as

This understanding of relations between things, bodies, and environments is also reected in Bordens (2001) research on skateboarding. He emphasises how skateboarders bring time, space, and social being together by confronting the architectural surface with the body and boards (2001: 195). However, one of the contexts that Michael develops this understanding is in relation to the mediating characteristics of walking boots:
the boots become a version of Serres parasites they materially intervene in what should be a smooth ow of communication between nature and body; they disrupt, abbreviate, curtail the signals, or materials, that pass between those two entities. Instead of being silent, they constitute noise which drowns out, or rather, which utterly interrupts, many of the usual ows between human and nature. (2001: 115 116)

What Michaels work provides is an analytic perspective for understanding the signicance of these material objects, such as shoes, featured in participants accounts. Rather than position humans, objects, and the environment as separate entities, the focus

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Jennie Middleton sensuality of walking fast enough. In Laurier, Maze and Lundins study of dog walking in the park, a similar analytic position is taken in relation to walking units comprised of man doglead dog (2006: 20). In their analysis they point to how walking is not done unequipped and that the lead, the path, the ball or stick, the reward are all equipment for that practice (2006: 20). Elsewhere it has been argued that walking is a key resource in the co-ordination of peoples day-to-day lives, furthermore how people carry out parallel activities as they move on foot (see Middleton 2009). This theme continues in relation to the signicance of material objects in accounts of participants walking patterns and, in contrast to dog walking, many of these material objects do not equip the practice of urban walking but encumber it. For example, this London Fields resident describes (and explains) her combined journey to work on foot and by bus:
MON 4 JULY 8.35 8.43 am Walked from home to bus stop to go to work. Chose to catch bus as had lots of stuff for work that I was carrying so didnt want to walk all the way. On my own passed other people on way to work or kids going to school. (DiarySusannah, London Fields resident, Hackney)

becomes how humans objects environment are combined as a singular analytic unit. For example, in returning to the above diary extract, Paul explains how his shoes are patently too tight no matter how thin the socks. Pauls account makes available how shoes can be understood as part of such a hybrid unit of analysis (human socks shoes pavement). In Michaels terms the tightness of Pauls shoes intervene and disrupt the ow between Pauls body and the pavement upon which he walks. However, as previously discussed, shoes were not the only material object of signicance in participants accounts. For example, Amy describes one particular journey on foot into work:
DAY 02: TUESDAY 21 JUNE 05 0835 0906: HOME WORK: A pleasant walk to work, slightly marred by an impractical skirt that doesnt let me move my legs fast enough. I walk part of the way hand in hand with my boyfriend and then part at Rosemary Works: he walks along the canal, I walk towards Hoxton, feeling tired but optimistic. (DiaryAmy, Canonbury resident, Islington)

For Amy, her walk to work is slightly marred by an impractical skirt. Feminist critiques of womens clothing are primarily underpinned by a functionalist paradigm in which fashion has been criticized for failing to obey the principle of practical utility (Negrin 1999: 99). However, womens fashion is not what is at stake in Amys account. The signicance of the skirt in Amys diary extract is in the way she positions the skirt as a co-agent in this walking unit (Laurier, Maze and Lundin 2006), of human skirt pavement boyfriend, that doesnt let her move her legs fast enough. It is this co-agency that has marred the

The stuff for work that Susannah is carrying does not equip her journey to work on foot but restricts it. Susannah frames her journey as an assemblage of human and non-human objects. It is this assemblage that makes visible the signicance of the stuff for how her journey unfolds. The ever-increasing, everyday, technological phenomenon of the mobile phone also featured in several participant accounts. Although it is not something that

Sense and the city encumbers pedestrian movement in the same way as having things to carry such as luggage and shopping, it can be argued to encumber walking in a different way as the following extracts demonstrate:
9.00walk to work: Home (Angel) to Margaret Street, just off Oxford St by Oxford Circus I am late, and should have left 15 mins earlier but its Monday. Also very hot. I send a text message to my Mum as I walk, which I dont do often (I once tried reading while walking but had too many near-misses with other pedestrians and lamp posts). (DiaryTom, Barnsbury resident, Islington) The tunnel affords me time to consider other things. Such as why people nd it so difcult to walk in a straight line? Its a pet hate. People texting whilst walking, but there has to be a level of pavement decorum. Dont walk down the middle. AND DONT DRIFT!! (DiaryPaul, Canonbury resident, Islington)

589

accounts for appropriate walking behaviour, or what Paul describes as pavement decorum. However, further sense can be made of all of the data discussed above by turning our attention back to the writings of Latour and how he contends:
anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actoror, if it has no guration yet, an actant. Thus, the question to ask about any agent are simply the following: Does it make a difference in the course of some other agents action or not? (2005b: 71)

The above accounts feature the opportunities walking provides for parallel activities in the form of mobile phone use. However, there is more at issue here than walking and using a mobile phone. Both Tom and Paul frame the assemblage of human mobile phone built environment in relation to what it is to be a skilled or accomplished pedestrian. For example, Tom uses the example of reading while walking and the too many near-misses with other pedestrians and lamp posts, as to why he does not often text whilst walking. For Paul, his concern is why people nd it so difcult to walk in a straight line. Paul attends to this concern by making visible the hybrid of human mobile phone pavement. Thus, these human object environment units provide resources in both Tom and Pauls

Latour elaborates that this is only not the case if you can maintain that, for example, walking in the street with or without clothes . . . are exactly the same activities, that the introduction of these mundane implements change nothing important to the realization of the tasks. He highlights that these implements according to our denition, are actors, or more precisely, participants in the course of action waiting to be given a guration (2005b: 71). Thus, it is possible to conceive of these mediations beyond the singular unit of analysis of human object environment. As Latour makes a specic case for an understanding of time that is neither linear nor lived, something he refers to as the fth dimension of time, he aims to shift attention to the labor that goes into the fabrication of spaces and times (2005a: 179). His point is that mediations such as the mundane technologies discussed above are innite and that we never encounter time and space, but a multiplicity of interactions with actants having their own timing, spacing, goals, means, and ends (2005a: 181). It is possible to draw upon Latours conception of these multiple mediations, or translations, to understand the practice of walking. Pedestrian movement is not the intermediary between

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Jennie Middleton In contrast to policy discussions where walking is largely positioned as a homogeneous and self-evident means of transport, and abstract theorisations of urban walking within many academic writings, this paper has sought to examine urban pedestrian movement in the context of the experiences accounted for by those who actually navigate, negotiate, and traverse the city streets in their everyday lives. As such, its contribution lies in engaging with these, often neglected, experiences of urban pedestrians whilst both understanding the practice of walking as a socio-technical assemblage of embodied, material and technological relations, and drawing upon discursive analysis as a means of avoiding essentialising those very experiences as self-evident. It can be argued that it is these experiences that provide an opportunity for an increased engagement between urban and pedestrian policy and urban and social theory. There are of course challenges surrounding the dialogue between academic research and urban policy (see Imrie 2004; Markusen 1999; Martin 2001) and it would be difcult for pedestrian policymakers to fully engage with the heterogeneity of walking practices discussed in this paper, given the generalising parameters they have to work within. However, rather than research such as this directly informing the formulation of pedestrian policy, its contribution lies in highlighting neglected issues that can make a positive offering to policymakers in pursuing their own declared aim of gaining a greater understanding of pedestrian movement (Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs 2001). Whilst these neglected issues are of course interrelated and interdependent, for the purpose of this discussion, they can again be understood in relation to three broad concerns. First, is in relation to recognising the signicance of pedestrian data other than that which

two points or ways of being, instead walking can be understood as a set of translations and a process in, or of, itself. What this paper has illustrated is how an urban walker is just one of the multiple agents in this network with their agency secured in the coming together of things such as acquired walking skills, and pavement design and construction. Yet what are the implications of conceiving of urban walking in this way, particularly in terms of urban and pedestrian policy?

Conclusion: engaging with policy

Walking and urban policy served as a departure point for this paper, and the broader research upon which it is based, in three signicant ways. First, the issues engaged with here can be situated within the context of growing public and policy concerns with encouraging people to adopt more sustainable transport modes such as walking and cycling. For example, walking is a prominent feature in a host of recent policy agenda discusssions including: eco towns (Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) 2008, 2009); sustainable communities (DCLG 2007; Ofce of the Deputy Prime Minister 2002); and the urban renaissance (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions 1999, 2000). Second, the research reported here addresses the lack of appropriate data on walking reported in both policy, and some academic arenas, in terms of pedestrian environments, activities and behaviours (Brog and Erl 2001: Desylass et al. 2003; Gemzoe 2001). Third, the reported ndings have moved beyond the dominant focus of policy and public interest in walking as a healthy sustainable mode of transport that often obscures the less remarkable, unspectacular, and unreported everyday experiences associated with walking.

Sense and the city is quantied. As discussed, data on walking in the policy arena is characterised by quantitative studies such as the National Travel Survey (Department for Transport 2008, 2009) or attitudinal reports on walking behaviours (Transport for London 2008). The research presented in this paper demonstrates the importance of gathering data on what actually happens between A and B as people move on foot. In contrast to quantitative studies of walking as a mode of transport, the diary and interview accounts have afforded an engagement with the experiential dimensions of walking that makes apparent a range of issues with, and beyond, the dominant focus on the built environment in current pedestrian policy. For example, discussion highlights the multisensual nature of peoples pedestrian experiences and the intimate links between the senses and the emergent spatio-temporal patterns of walking and peoples sense of place. With increasing nancial constraints being placed on transport and urban policy research budgets, this type of in-depth research is of particular value in providing policymakers with data that highlights the importance of making walking more pleasant from an embodied perspective. That is, moving beyond the pre-given assumptions and disembodied constructions of pedestrians within walking and transport policy which render them inert and lifeless (Bissell 2010: 271). Second, concerns the importance of practical decision-making that eschews more rational and predictable accounts of walking that dominate current pedestrian policy thinking. In other words, the data discussed in this paper highlight the routinised and embodied aspects of experience that cannot be reduced to rational intention. This is signicant in policy terms as an area might be considered more walkable if a pedestrian is able to walk on autopilot and the ow of their movement is

591

uninterrupted by an awareness of their corporeal planes of experience. Finally, in exploring the links between walking and the body the paper not only demonstrates how pedestrian experiences are mediated through sensory engagements but the importance of how people use sensual talk in their accounts of their pedestrian experiences. However, exploring these accounts has done more than reveal how people discursively attend to their actions. What also emerges is the salience of material objects in participants movements on foot and the co-agency of these mundane technologies in assemblages of urban walking practices. Exploring the role of mediating mundane technologies (Michael 2000) to walking practices, highlights to policymakers the signicance of materialities beyond the built environment and hard city infrastructures such as pavements and pedestrian crossings which form the dominant focus of current pedestrian policy documents. This paper specically examines how objects are situated in complex assemblages that form part and parcel of the embodied experiences of walking. Although the material objects discussed, such as footwear, clothing, mobile technologies, luggage, and the transportation of personal effects, could be considered mundane features of everyday life they really do matter in the everyday experiences of urban pedestrians. Understanding everyday urban walking practices as a socio-technical assemblage enables an engagement with such mediations and in so doing illustrates the complexity of urban pedestrian movement and how these mediations need to be recognised as multiple and indenitely variable in form. It is only by policymakers more broadly acknowledging the signicance of pedestrians embodied experiences that they will gain a more nuanced understanding of urban walking and how it may be further encouraged.

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Acknowledgements
This paper was made possible by doctoral and postdoctoral support from the ESRC (PTA033-2003-00014 and PTA-026-27-1500). I would like to thank David Bissell, David Middleton, Jon Shaw and Richard Yarwood for extremely helpful comments on a previous draft and to three anonymous referees for their constructive and insightful feedback. Notes
1 April 2004 saw ITV launch its nationwide campaign, Britain on the Move, in a bid to encourage people to follow experts advice that 30 minutes of brisk walking a day is the amount of activity required to keep us healthy and vital (,http://www2.angliatv.com/artman/ publish/about.shtml.). In 2004 and 2005 the Greater London Authority hosted a London at Your Feet day promoting the benets of walking as part of the Trafalgar Square Summer events. In 2008 Go London (the National Health Service London campaign to increase Londoners participation in physical activity in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics) launched a Think Feet First campaign with the aim of encouraging Londoners to walk. In January 2010 The Guardian and Observer newspapers ran a weekend special The Complete Guide to Walking. Even Kelloggs Special K cereal has had tokens on promotional packs that you could save in exchange for a pedometer to count the 10,000 steps each day that the Walking the Way to Health initiative recommends for optimal health. 2 Throughout the course of the wider research project on urban walking in London, participants consistently raised concerns in relation to what they considered to be boring, of no interest, and unremarkable accounts of their everyday walking patterns.

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conventions differents de la marche urbaine et comment ceux-la sont lies intiment aux sens ` corporels et a la materialite de la ville fournissent ` une opportunite de creer un engagement accru entre la politique urbaine et la politique des pietons et la theorie urbaine et sociale. Mots-clefs: marche, sens, incarnation, la ville, politique des pietons. Sentido y la ciudad: explorando las geografas encarnadas de caminar en la ciudad Dentro la poltica peatona del Reino Unido, caminar esta promovido como un modo de transporte sostenible que se benecia ambos cuerpo y mente. Sin embargo, la mayora de discusiones polticas se suponen que todo caminar es lo mismo y es un modo de transporte evidente, mientras la participacion academica con caminar son teoras complejas que faltan una exploracion emprica sistemica de las practicas actuales de peatones. Es decir, hay poco que se desempaque las experiencias de los que navegan, negocian, y atraviesan las calles en sus vidas diarias. Al contrario, este papel intenta situar y entender la practica de caminar diariamente por las experiencias de peatones urbanos. Caminar esta posicionado y entendido como un ensamblaje socio-tecnico que se presta atencion a las relaciones encarnadas, materiales y tecnologicas y sus sig nicados para entablar los movimientos urbanos diarios a pie. El analisis se utiliza entrevistas detalladas y datos de los foto diarios de participantes de los barrios Islington y Hackney de Londres. Atencion analtico esta dado a los estilos y convenciones diferentes de caminar en la ciudad y como estos estan relacionados ntimamente a los sentidos siologicos y la materialidad de la ciudad se provee una oportunidad aumentar la envolucracion entre polticas urbanas y peatonales, y teora urbana y social. Palabras claves: caminar, sentidos, encarnacion, la ciudad, poltica peatonal.

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Abstract translations
Sens et la cite: en explorant des geographies incarnees de la marche urbaine Dans la politique des pietons de la Royaume-Uni, la marche est promue comme un moyen de transport renouvelable qui prot le corps ainsi que la tete. Toutefois, beaucoup de discussion des politiques assument toute la marche detre la meme et un moyen de transport largement evident, pendant que les engagements avec la marche de beaucoup des academiques sont des theorisations tres abstraites ` qui manquent de toute exploration systematique et empirique des pratiques reelles des pietons. Comme tel, il y a peu qui deballe les experiences de ceux qui louvoient, negocient, et traversent les rues de la ville dans leurs vies quotidiennes. Contrairement, cet article a lintention a situer ` et comprendre la pratique de la marche quotidienne dans des experiences oraisons des pietons urbains. La marche est positionnee et comprise comme un assemblage socio-technique qui facilite lattention specique detre attirer aux relations incarnees, materielles et technologues et leurs importances pour lengagement avec des mouvements aux pieds quotidiens et urbains. Lanalyse fait lusage des entretiens en profondeurs et des donnees dun carnet photographique de la marche des participants dans des arrondissements de centre ville de Londres dIslington et dHackney. Dattention particulie re et analytique aux styles et aux `

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