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Techno-Politics of Walking: Continuity and Change of Streets as Public Space in Urban Europe

This project is about walking in cities, now and then. Considering streets as public spaces it will examine how changes to their physical layout and innovations in traffic technology impacted the (dis)integration of our most sustainable mode of mobility: the pedestrians.

The aim of the project is to contribute to the understanding of walking in the creation of public space and the potential for its revival in European cities. It does so by examining the contestation during the 20th century between the governance of pedestrians and the actual walking practices found locally in both Stockholm and Copenhagen. The analysis is carried out within four case studies, focussing on different kinds of material and technological governance of walking: through the implementation of sidewalks, traffic signals, pedestrian streets and tunnels. Archive and document studies, used to capture stakeholder interaction in the governance of walking, are combined with sources particularly apt in capturing mundane practices, both in the past (photographs, letters to editors, court cases from accidents) and in the present (ethnomethodological analysis). Combined, these studies provide a basis for a comparative analysis of urban walking and its governance at the street-level. Next to academic journal articles, the project results are communicated in the form of a policy-oriented paper, and a showcase model, crafted in collaboration with ArkDes. This takes form in ‘Oracle Walks’, an interactive platform born out of the project’s research that offers guidance through our cities according to metrics beyond time and efficiency.

Participating universities: Uppsala universitet

Collaboration: ArkDes

Funding: Formas

Project period: 2020-2024

Publications

Emanuel, M., & Normark, D. (2023). (Un) equal footing: Otherings and orderings of urban mobility. The Journal of Transport History, 44(2), 165-182.

Emanuel, M. (2023). Leisure walking in the original compact city: Senses, distinction, and rhythms of the bourgeois promenade. Mobilities, 18(5), 700-718.

Emanuel, M. (2023). Pavement publics in late nineteenth-century Stockholm. The Journal of Transport History, 44(2), 201-232.

Normark, D. (2023). Recreational mobility on a busy street: Visual studies of alterity by doing jogging and doing dog-walking. Mobilities, 18(5), 756-772.

Emanuel, M. (2022). Tillbaka till 1800-talsgatan? Plan, no. 1-2, pp. 22-27.

Emanuel, M. (2021). Challenging the system: Pedestrian sovereignty in the early systemisation of city traffic in Stockholm, ca. 1945–1955. The Journal of Transport History, 42(2), 247-276.

Emanuel, M. (2021). Controlling walking in Stockholm during the inter-war period. Urban history, 48(2), 248-265.