I didn’t know what to expect from The Routledge International Handbook of Walking, and indeed much of the book—including almost the entire final section—is rather peripheral to my research interests. However, even chapters that seem to be unrelated to my project ended up yielding surprises, and the book as a whole suggests something about the richness of walking as a topic of research in a number of disciplines I hadn’t considered.
In the book’s preface, the editors describe walking as “an essentially human activity,” suggesting that whether it’s for transportation or leisure, or as a religious act, “walking has served as a significant philosophical, literary and historical subject” (xix). This book, they continue, takes a broad approach to the subject: “The purpose of this book is . . . to bring together a number of the main themes on the study of walking from different disciplines and literatures” (xix). Indeed, in the introduction, the editors contend that walking is inherently interdisciplinary—it crosses academic borders (1)—and that it is inherently a good thing: “Walking encourages good public and private health, interaction between neighbours, contributes to feeling of community and positive sense of place, and, importantly in a time of concerns over climate and environmental change, contributes to reductions in traffic congestion, air pollution and emissions, and resource use” (1). At the same time, though walking “is also constrained by social practices shaped by gender, culture, religion and economics,” and in many parts of the world, walking is in decline, because of other forms of mobility and changes in the planning and design of the built environment “that have often led to a decline in public space” (1). In addition, “walking has developed more as a commodity with associated development of commercial products such as specialist clothing, walking and fitness aids, as well as walking holidays and walking trails”—so that what was a private activity is now becoming marketed as a consumer good (2). Indeed, they continue, “indeed, the clash between notions of public and private is an important theme in much of the walking literature” (2). Walking can challenge forms of domestication or domination and enable us to ask questions about the authoritarian features of contemporary urban design, private property, and public space (2).
Almost everyone walks, but data on walking “is highly variable,” and many able-bodied people never walk anywhere (2). The editors indicate that a range of qualities of the built urban environment are relevant to walking; they include imageability (the quality of a place that makes it distinct and memorable), legibility (the ease of navigating and understanding the space), enclosure (the degree to which public spaces are visually defined by trees, buildings, and other elements), human scale (whether the “texture and articulation of physical elements” match the size and proportions of humans and the speed at which they walk), transparency (the degree to which people can perceive human activity beyond the edge of a street or other public space), linkage (physical and visual connections between elements in public spaces), complexity (the visual richness of a place), and coherence (the sense of visual order a place provides” (6). These features, which end up being considered under the term “walkability,” are particularly interesting for me. Current walking art practices focus on collective, convivial, and participatory walks, in which the role of the artist is to curate an experience for participants, and the kind of walking I’ve been doing—solitary and somewhat durational—is considered out-of-date or even politically regressive. Sometimes I wonder whether those who advocate convivial walking, most of whom are in the United Kingdom, are missing the context in which those convivial walks take place. Perhaps parts of the UK are more walkable, or perhaps a general level of walkability in that country has led to the development of a walking culture which convivial, artistic walking is part of or related to. I’m not sure. All I can say for certain is that outside of a very limited selection of paths—around Wascana Lake and, to a lesser extent, along Wascana Creek—very few people walk in the city where I live, and issues of walkability might be a factor. Perhaps engaging people in participatory or convivial art walking would be much more difficult in this city, given the different degree of walkability here and the lack of a walking culture. Context is important, and different places will present different contexts in which walking of all kinds takes place.
There are strong associations between the physical environment and leisure walking (7). Studies have found that “land-use mix, connectivity and population density, and overall neighbourhood design were important determinants of physical activity,” including walking (7). Safety is another issue related to walking: it can refer “to safety from traffic, safety from other people (i.e. from crime), and physical safety (i.e. from falls or animal attacks),” and the nature of the built environment “can have a significant impact” on perceived safety (7). Walking in this city is often unsafe, because of a lack of sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure. In addition, men and women tend to perceive walking in public spaces differently, partly because of perceptions of safety (10). The editors note that “only 60% of women in the UK feel safe walking at night, compared to 82% of men” (10). However, the data from the UK suggest that men and women walk the same amount, so women may walk while feeling unsafe (10). In addition,“location as well as culture are very important factors in influencing whether or not places are regarded as safe for women, as well as whether they are perceived differentially between men and women” (10-11).
Technology is changing the experience of walking, particularly mobile phones and “wearable ICT and augmented reality” (11). For instance, many people use technology that allows them to track how many steps they’ve taken; the notion that we should take 10,000 steps every day dates back to the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games and an effort at supporting the physical activity of the Japanese population (11). By 2016, an estimated 20 million people worldwide were using Fitbit devices to track their steps; one in five Americans measures steps with some form of technology (11)—even though there’s no evidence that these devices increase their wearers’ fitness levels (11). Pokémon Go is—or was: are people still playing that game?—an augmented reality app that contributed “an additional dimension to the link between physical activity and technology” (11). The editors suggest that the impact of “carryable and wearable augmented technologies on walking is likely to be profound” (11); it’s possible that “the intersection of walkability and mobility with the ‘Internet of Things,’ ‘smart cities,’ social networks, transport networks, Google, and augmented and virtual realities” could mean that “perhaps in only ten years’ time, the social practices of walking for many will be profoundly different” (12). Such technologies could “create new opportunities for marketization, the furthering of capital and the closing of the informational commons,” yet they also “hold considerable promise for better design of built environments and the enhancement of walkability” (19). “Nevertheless, the extent to which such methods and the people who adopt them contribute to the public rather than the private good will depend as much on political and ethical decisions as it will the availability of technologies” (19).
“Walking is a democratic act,” the editors conclude, a claim that underlies much of contemporary artistic walking. “All can potentially share in it”—at least, all of those who are physically able to walk, I think; the volume pays little attention to the needs of people in wheelchairs or those for whom walking is difficult. “However, as this and the other chapters in this book demonstrate, there are a wide range of constraints that limit where, when and even how people can walk,” the editors acknowledge. “Nevertheless, the slowness of walking enables linkages and connectivity to people and place that other forms of transport do not provide” (19-20).
In the book’s second chapter, “Walking in the Capitalist City: On the Socio-Economic Origins of Walkable Urbanism” (27-36), Anja Hälg Bieri, argues that walking is not only “a human form of locomotion or a transportation mode” but “a social phenomenon” (27). The chapter theorizes walking anthropologically, as a social practice “that takes on different forms in different historical and spatial contexts,” and draws “a genealogy of the walking trend and theorizing its underlying logic with the help of critical theory” (27). “A dialectic of aestheticization and commodification runs through modernity that generates aestheticized forms of walking today,” Bieri contends:
While the desire to walk is initially a form of aesthetic struggle against the rational principles of modernity and the forces of capitalism, this struggle is co-opted by the logic of capital in a continuous interlacing of the processes of aestheticization and commodification. The social and spatial consequences of capitalism together with the process of aestheticization of society produce new spatial forms of capitalism, new commodified forms of social interaction, and new forms of walking. What became of the yearning for agency through walking? With walkable urbanism, capital returns to the city centre and creates new markets for a budding walkable lifestyle which is fed through conspicuous consumption. (27)
This argument would be a lot easier to follow if Bieri defined “aestheticization” or explained what the term means, or even if she cited a source for the word.
Anthropologically, walking is “a universal phenomenon, but it takes on different forms in different cultures, times and places,” forms which “are subject to change” (27). “Moreover, walking is a performative act, in the sense that it co-creates social distinction and social identity,” Bieri argues. “Walking and the social possibilities of walking represent the spatial organization of a given society and its subjects. It is both a physical and a social practice” (27). She is interested in “walking in the context of walkable urbanism,” “a trend in urban design and planning” which “promotes urban space that is more walkable than the traditional car-centred spaces” (27). According to Bieri, we need to understand this notion “both in its urban design dimension and in its social dimension”: walkable urbanism creates new forms of built environment, but it also “creates a social environment, an ecology, and even a lifestyle” (27). “Urban design and architecture styles are not isolated, but they need to be conceived in their social, historical and spatial context” (27), she argues, and so “contemporary forms of walking” are products “of the aestheticization of society and capitalism’s continuous quest for new markets” (27).
Here Bieri arrives at what seems to be her theoretical touchstone, a book I have yet to read: “the social imaginaries and the material manifestations of walkable urbanism are places of spectacle,” she writes, following Guy Debord’s book, The Society of the Spectacle, which suggests that “the spectacle is a social relation between people mediated by images” (27-28). “The misleading impression is that the human-scale, somewhat analogue character of making America more walkable seems to go against the grain of a spectacular society of simulacra and pastiche” (28), she writes, but it is “yet another stage of commodification, using the growing aestheticization of society to appropriate the yearning for more creativity and agency” (28).“Walkable urbanism and the trend for creativity find their aesthetic and commodified realization in creative cities and their creative economy,” she continues, so that “the tender aesthetic rebellion against the car-centred, isolating landscape and culture of post-war America through initiatives to further walking has been co-opted by capital’s interest in finding new markets, aided by the aestheticization of society, thereby deceptively combining the economic and political needs of capital” (28).
At this point, Bieri turns to walking as an art practice as a form of spectacle:
Walking as art, walking as research method, and walkable urbanism can all be understood as an attempt to reclaim an everyday practice—walking. It is striking, however, that the predominant forms that emerge from this endeavour are not everyday forms of walking but performative forms of walking—art walking, research walking, and walking in walkable spaces that are spaces of spectacle. The alienation from walking, from a direct use of the body for locomotion, is so advanced that all the postmodern reclamations of walking result in these performative forms of walking. An everyday activity is elevated to something extraordinary. It is aestheticized. Thereby, walking (or the relationship to walking and the use of the body) goes through another stage of alienation through creating even more spectacle. It reproduces late capitalism’s logic and cannot unwind the postmodern spiral. It cannot fulfil the yearning still attached to the modern promises of happiness, it only aggrandizes the yearning by creating images of idealized walking and the silent realization of failure to live up to this image without understanding the reasons for this failure. (29)
As a result, “the political force is taken out of the movement towards more walking, more physical capacity, imaginary freedom and ultimately happiness” (29). I wonder if that’s true of all art walking practices—both solo and participatory—or if any practices live up to their claim to be both creative and critical for Bieri. It seems, from her argument, that she believes none do.
The built environment actively produces the society it reflects (30). Because the built environment and society are in a dialectical relation to each other, urban design is “highly political,” and she reads both walkable urbanism and walking in this way (30). “Designing walkable urbanism like a theme park with a set of supposedly evidence-based arguments, ranging from health benefits to tourism attractions to economic uplift, creates places of spectacle that only further our state of alienation,” she writes (30). “Imaginaries of class differences are reproduced in walkable urbanism, as consumption is a means for social distinction,” she continues. “Genders are performed in relation to other established categories of difference, such as class, ethnicity and sexual orientation” (31). Therefore, walkable urbanism, as a response to the limits of suburban life, may appear to be liberating, but it is yet another “aestheticized and commodified lifestyle” (32). Walkable urbanism is a trend, part of real-estate and tourism marketing: “The desire to make American towns and cities, even suburbs, more walkable and to sell walkability to real-estate clients and tourists has led to the quest for a repeatable scenario, a tendency already present in the beginnings of this urban design trend and which established itself over time. A recipe for mass-produced walkability emerged” (34). Like any other rebellion or innovation, walkable urbanism presents the danger of recuperation by “the dominating forces”—and “[t]he fact that walkability is becoming a sale pitch for real-estate premiums, that a whole spectrum of gear, clothes and even cars go with a walkable lifestyle, that walkable neighbourhoods are becoming an exclusive place of social distinction through consumption rather than through civic activity, all point to the necessity to try and understand this phenomenon in its economic and social context” (34). I always find the argument that walking requires specific gear and clothing to be a little difficult to swallow, since aside from a comfortable pair of shoes, little is required to walk relatively short distances. I’m not sure what cars go with a walking lifestyle, either. In other words, parts of Bieri’s argument would be more convincing if it presented clear evidence in support of its claims.
The book’s third chapter, Phil Smith’s essay “Radical Twenty-First-Century Walkers and the Romantic Qualities of Leisure Walking (37-45), is the reason I decided to read this book in the first place. Smith begins with Jiro Taniguchi’s 1992 manga, The Walking Man, in which “the everyday walks of a conservative white-collar worker are diverted by chance and curiosity into an ambiguous zone between leisurely strolls and hyper-sensitised exploration, trespass, stalking and pilgrimage” (37). That manga “maps the territory for this chapter, which examines examples of UK-based walking arts practitioners who work around the boundaries of everyday or leisure walking, part of an identifiable ‘meshwork’ with unevenly shared principles, aesthetics and narratives” (37). Smith describes a number of walking art practices, all by women artists: Jess Allen’s “tractivism,” walking footpaths and engaging the people she meets in dialogues about ecology and climate change (37), and Elspeth Owen’s durational walks, such as Grandmother’s Footsteps (2009), in which she carried messages between other first-time grandparents (37). “While Allen and Owen generally walk alone, their practices are sociable and relational (unlike the epic solo journeys of earlier male walking artists, such as Richard Long); not only challenged by terrain and duration, but ecologically woven into that environment . . . and reflexively confronting the social in their own bodies,” Smith writes (38). He also describes convivial walking art practices, such as Emma Bush’s Village Walk (2008), which “was led at different times by different residents; they narrated the history of individual houses, discussed residents’ paintings, told autobiographical and fantastic stories” (38). “There were collective actions of planting, singing and witnessing a newly engaged couple dancing,” Smith writes. “Somewhere between a community and an aesthetic event, the walk wove together public spaces with private gardens and rooms, entangling local historiography with subjective fantasies, challenging the valorisation of authenticity and dismantling each narrative as it established itself” (38).
Some walking art practices are documented in text, such as Lucy Furlong’s Amniotic City (2011), which “maps a space as defined as any village, close to the City of London” through poetry. Furlong’s poems “are recognisably sited; potential liturgies for re-enactment”; they are “proposals, less bent on cutting passages than on following clues to alignments of desire in patterns immersed in the terrain,” they interweave “intimacy and otherness” (38). Amniotic City included “a beautifully produced fold-out psychogeographical poetry map that depicts London’s hidden feminine archetypes,” according to The Guardian’s Dan Holloway; I looked for a copy online but apparently the book or chapbook (it’s hard to tell which best describes Amniotic City) is out of print. Smith also discusses the zines collected by Laura Oldfield Ford in her book Savage Messiah (2011), which are “fuelled by emotions, rushes, love, desiring, dreaming and an erotic urge to fight back. Inspired by her ‘drifts’ through the brutalist architecture of the emptying housing estates she has lived in, they speak of the spontaneity of parties, squatting and protests, of self-questioning and heightened states” (38).
“These are just five of the hundreds of self-designating ‘walking artists’ or artists and activists using walking in the UK,” Smith tells us (38). “While they are distinctive practitioners, there is much common ground in immersive and reflexive subjectivities, the deferral of synthesis and the sustenance of multiplicities, placing oneself at the mercy of the world, shifts between solitude and sociability, use of everyday materials, distance from a recognised art market and playing around common forms of walking such as strolling, tourist visiting, rural rambling and guided walks,” he continues (38). Those “common forms of walking” are not that common where I live—certainly rural rambling and guided walks are quite rare—and that difference makes me wonder whether the walking context in this city would support convivial or participatory art practices, and whether there is a significant difference between walking in the UK and walking here. In my limited experience of walking in the UK, there are differences. There are few footpaths in Saskatchewan, and access for walkers to private land is very rare. In the UK, in contrast, I was able to walk from Marlborough House into Oxford almost entirely on marked footpaths listed in an A-Z guide of the area—with the exception of a half mile on a terrifying B road, with cars passing at high speed just inches away from me while I cowered against a hedge. There is nothing like the UK’s network of national trails in Canada, either; true, the TransCanada Trail exists, but I’m not sure one could actually cross the country—or even a province—walking on it. I could be wrong, of course, but I’m beginning to wonder whether the demand that all walking be participatory might not be coming out of a very different pedestrian context than the one I experience here.
Smith notes that genealogies of walking art typically begin with Romanticism, implying a continuity between “twentieth-century radical walkers and movements” and Romanticism despite “their explicitly breaks from it” (38). More than half of the walking artists Smith surveyed rejected any influence from the Romantic tradition and/or saw their work as a break with Romanticism (39). Those walkers, practitioners of a “new movement” of walking or a “new psychogeography,” “are taking advantage of earlier movements’ breaks from functional and ideal walking to make their work increasingly in the ruptures and margins of everyday and recreational walking” (39).
Romanticism is the shadow against which many walking practices define themselves. Discussions of recreational walking “usually begin by citing aesthetic, philosophical or spiritual motivation” (39)—typically influenced by Romanticism. According to that motivation, hikers walk themselves “into anonymous symbiosis with the landscape,” which significantly under-represents “the impact of the walker on their environment,” and “a directly localised and site-specific spirituality” is advanced, one “served by parallel and contradictory narratives in which rural pedestrianism” is either disappearing, a form of religious practice, or a resistance to the dominance of automobiles (40). Indeed, Smith notes that it’s rare to find an acknowledgement that walking isn’t a pleasure (as Morris Marples does) (40). Its enthusiasts load walking “with universal meanings and virtues” that excesses of various kinds are generated, such as Colin Speakman’s claim that “To walk is to be a human” (qtd. 40).
“Yet competition, property accumulation, normativity and colonialism are among the roots of recreational walking,” Smith contends (40). He suggests that rural rambling is a separation from the real world, defined by moralism and aversion to risk and restriction; it is “cluttered with obstructive and constructed representations,” including exclusions of various kinds (40), or else it is “a righteous but functionalist exertion,” “a corporeal re-statement of common rights over property, and an inward-looking ambulation relegating the landscape to a visual background for contemplation” (40). “Entanglements of such conservative and radical, appropriative and ecological, romantic and materialist views are complexly manifest within individual walking groups, and within and between memberships and leaderships of walking organisations,” Smith notes (40).
The anthropologist Tim Ingold tries to “distil, personify and resolve” some of these contradictions in his introduction to the book Imagining Landscapes (40). Ingold prefers an “interwoven, active sensing,” derived from the work of cognitive scientist James J. Gibson, and he performs “a very peculiar, but revealing, act of wishful thinking” by turning to the photographs of walking artist Richard Long and suggesting that we “re-imagine these commodified images, encouraging passive consumption” (40-41) and instead understand the landscapes they depict as a “contrapuntal interweaving of material flows and sensory awareness” (qtd. 41). This argument redeploy’s Long’s art, “the products and sensibilities” of his practice, and and instead sees Long’s form of walking “in an alternating movement of casting forward and drawing up” (qtd. 41). Long’s solo, durational, representational (sometimes) art practice is very much out of fashion, and Ingold’s use of Long as an example seems to surprise Smith.
For Smith, a receptive field to Ingold’s strategy “awaits somewhere between the contradictions of recreational walking and the reparative practices of the new generation of walking artists and psychogeographers” (41). Recreational urban walking is not the usual form that recreational walking usually takes; most recreational walking is rural (41). In contrast, psychogeographers make “regular expeditions” “across derelict wastelands,” “into retail sites,” “along routes of culverted rivers, through sewerage and other concealed systems” and “around abject traffic structures” (41). Indeed, Smith notes that walking artists tend to see rural and urban spaces as entangled, rather than as binary opposites (41). He suggests that “if any one group of walkers has truly explored an ‘abyss of fusion’ it is the oft-maligned, urban, occult, late-twentieth-century literary psychogeographers who have sought out and described cryptic patterns in the urban fabric and invoked an intensity of presence equivalent to anything in the literature of rural walking” (42). These practices of urban, suburban, and edgeland walking are “peculiar in embracing difference and ambiguity,” in stepping back from the heroic, in “clinging to the rim of the abyss not as an extreme moment on a mount pass but as the modus vivendi of late capitalist psychic precarity” (42).
The “new psychogeography,” for Smith, is different from the older neo-psychogeography, which was “pulled between Marxian materialism, tedious algorithmic drifting and ‘mystical fusion’ with occult patterns”; instead, the “new psychogeography” is reflexive and reparative and heterogenous (43). “As well as providing the entanglement . . . required by Tim Ingold’s proposal for re-making walking,” Tina Richardson’s “new psychogeography” “reveals the gap that separates these kinds of walking from both Romantic and occult psychogeographical walking; their reflexive sensitivity to the performed nature of everyday life, their deconstruction of their own materials and forms of representation . . . their postmodern sensibility to the mediation of aesthetics and iconoclasm,” take precedence over “the distillation of Essence or Presence” typical of Romanticism (43). The product of these new forms of walking “is praxis, democratic but also provocative,” and participatory (43).
Smith suggests that Richard Long and Hamish Fulton might be easily mistaken for hikers: “Immersed in the hiker’s terrain of choice (moors, long trails, mountain regions),” their walking evokes “the apotheosis of the walker’s presence and fusion with spectacular place to which recreational walking, at various stages of dilution, aspires” (43). However, the “intense solitude” and “‘heroic’ pace” of their “epic journeys,” and Long’s “physical interventions in and extractions from the landscape put a considerable distance between them and anything like leisure” (43). Moreover, their works—with the exception of Fulton’s shift to participatory walks—“do not ‘bait,’ but successfully circulate within, the conventional art market and generate a passive, mentally appropriative consumption rather than provoke trespass” (43). Smith prefers walking practices that “provoke trespass” and that exist outside of “the conventional art market.” Literary psychogeography also encourages “passive consumption,” although Smith suggests that Iain Sinclair’s “walk-based books” may be at odd with that passivity because of “their inspiring effect” (43). I was shocked when I read those words, since Sinclair’s books, which I quite like, are rarely spoken of in positive terms by contemporary walking artists.
“The latest generation of performative, postmodern walkers (artists, activists, and psycho-geographers) has more in common with the iconoclastic break of the International Lettristes/situationists; but without their retreat from engagement,” Smith concludes. “Where there is product, other than walking itself, it often takes the form of documentation, handbooks and exemplary objects designed to encourage others to further exploratory walking rather than of commodities for new markets” (43). “This ‘new movement’ of walkers places itself in ambiguous and critical, but not dismissive, proximity to the gaze and ethos of the leisurely stroll, at times borrowing from the practices of recreational walking,” he continues. “Rather than confrontation, this ablative, ‘just to the side’ of the ramble, is not ‘absorbed within a wider perspective’ of nature, implacable time, massive space, emptiness and near silence, but proposes a sociability, ordinariness and intense relation to the terrain (built and natural, rural and urban) that is both an abolition and an extension . . . of Romantic ‘fusion’” (43-44). Thus new walking art practices are about multiple layering or archaeological engagement with space, and there is a “potential ground” for them within hiking and rambling (44)—a claim that is another surprise, since both hiking and rambling tend to be durational and therefore less participatory and demographic than short urban walks. “Given their strategic positioning, valorising the everyday and the ‘to the side’ of the aesthetic, the ‘new movement’ and ‘new psychogeographers’ are well placed to gain leverage within the multiple contradictions of recreational walking; to embrace and redeploy immersive, sensual, ritualistic, contemplative and interpretative elements of Romantic, recreational walking,” he continues:
To expose, accentuate and challenge the contradictions of the appropriative, neo-colonialist products of Romanticist walking arts and “new nature writers” and persuade leisure walkers to take a small step to the side of the conventions of their strolling/hiking/rambling to an agentive, non-appropriative walking; to walk in the gaps (both in the sense of ideological contradictions and affordances for trespass) rather than “in fusion.” To invoke recreational walking’s origins in rebellion. (44).
That kind of walking practice is good; other forms of walking, which tend to lead to soft fascination (more on that shortly), are not good. However, I wonder if there’s a connection between walking “in the gaps” and soft fascination. I will have to learn more.
I skipped a chapter that did not seem relevant to my research and landed on Karein K. Goertz’s essay, “Walking as Pedagogy” (55-64). “For a variety of economic, ideological and quality-of-life reasons, so-called millennials (born between the early 1980s and 2000) are rejecting cars and choosing to live in walkable urban communities,” Goertz writes (55). “As intentionally built environments, college campuses are well positioned to make walking an integral part of their ethos and identity” (55). That might be true at some universities, but certainly not at the one where I work!. “If walking is to become a public health priority in the fight against chronic disease, institutions of learning must lead the way,” Goertz continues, and universities can do that by training students across disciplines to recognize their role in promoting walking and walkable communities (55). “For many American students, the transition into a daily routine without a car and with a lot more walking marks a radical departure from their past experience,” (56) but the “formative, typically car-free college years can and should play a significant role in initiating and shaping them as walkers” (56). For that reason, this chapter “examines data from science and the humanities on the mental, emotional and physical impact of walking and proposes pedagogical applications to enhance student learning and wellness” (56).
For many first-year students, “becoming a student coincides with becoming a daily walker out of necessity” (56). “Perhaps more interestingly, walking can be seen as a metaphor for change and dynamism: just as the walker is on the move, not stuck to one place or perspective, so too, the student is in a particularly fluid time of life when, ideally, old patterns are broken, ideas are approached anew and self-identity undergoes transformation,” Goertz suggests (56). In addition, walking gets us away from our desks, which is important for health and for the opportunity to experience “changing scenery, unplanned encounters and surprising thoughts that engage the mind” (56). “Physical movement and mental activity are complimentary, and walking, in particular, fosters the very kind of original, inquisitive and creative thinking that is the hallmark of a college education,” she contends (56).
A student’s first experience of campus often a walking tour—a way to orient oneself spatially (57). Goertz suggests that first-year students might be asked “to design a thematically oriented walking tour” as part of their classes (57). I wonder what discipline would support such an assignment. Walking also encourages sociability, even though students are typically wearing earbuds or looking at their phones (57)—a fact that undercuts Goertz’s claim. Walking could also help students deal with the record numbers of mental health problems that are being reported, including depression, anxiety, eating and sleep disorders (57). “Many people with mental illness have found that walking helps them manage their inner anguish,” she writes (57). “Recent empirical findings in (neuro)physiology validate the curative properties of walking with variables relative to duration, intensity and frequency: it clears the body of stress hormones, boosts endorphins, strengthens the immune system, increases energy, elevates mood and promotes restful sleep” (58), and the “flow of oxygen to the brain heightens mental alertness, concentration and memory” and “enhances connectivity of brain circuits and boosts performance on cognitive tasks” (58). For these reasons, “colleges should explicitly encourage and support” walking “as basic preventative care for mental and physical health” (58).
Along with its health benefits, “[t]he cognitive benefits of walking support the college mandate of teaching students how to think critically, analytically and creatively” (58). Goertz notes that “walking has been shown to considerably promote creative thinking and the generation of new ideas”; it “is an excellent facilitator of original, innovative thinking because the physical act of left-right steps simulates the integration of the two halves of the brain, the logical and the intuitive. The rhythmic alternation of steps can put the walker into a relaxes, but fully aware alpha state that is conducive to creative thinking” (60). Walking meetings are part of corporate culture, so why couldn’t advising appointments be conducted peripatetically? she asks (61).
While walking is “not always practical when students need access to computers, white-boards, desks, etc.,” nonetheless “there are a number of curricular applications that would enhance the learning experience” (61). For instance, “[s]mall walking groups could help brainstorm ideas, break up habituated seating arrangements, change the scenery and energy level, and shift attention away from the instructor” (61). “In light of the many benefits of walking for mental and physical health, academic skills and creativity, it makes sense that colleges actively promote walking,” she concludes (61). Walking “serves as a compelling model and vehicle for students to assert their own position as active, aware and engaged participants in this world and to step towards it” (63). What about students who cannot walk, though, or who prefer not to? What about issues of climate and weather? What about commuter campuses where the car is king?
In chapter 6,“Walking in Germany: Between Recreation and Ideology” (65-73), Dirk Reiser and Vanessa Jansen-Meinen suggest that the expansion of interest in walking after the turn of the 21st century in Germany was encouraged by the publication of books about walking—both fiction and nonfiction (65). Because walking replies to the increasing speed of contemporary life, they claim, it encourages walkers to become immersed in flow states (65). As a “gentle form of mobility,” walking
fits in with a growth in health-conscious behaviour and a movement towards sustainability. This positive image change during the last decade is due to the possibility of an outdoor experience with low entry barriers that is consistent with a sustainable, environment-conscious and nature-responsive lifestyle—although walking has a long history as a vital part of tourism and recreational activities in Germany. (65-66)
In German, there is a clear distinction between walking and strolling: strolling is “regarded as being more spontaneous, without special equipment or preparation, in contrast to what is required for walking (e.g. planning of route and equipment, shoes, checking of weather and maps)” (66). In addition, while walking suggests relatively short walks, trekking is used for walks that take several days; there are additional forms of walking in German, including “hillwalking, mountaineering, long-distance hiking, height hikes, scouting, hut hikes” (66). The differences between these forms have to do with “the place of accommodation, seasonal nature of walking, and the use of fixed rope routes” (66).
The authors note that 16 percent of Germans go on walking holidays, and the rest include some walking in their vacations (66). While most Germans “walk for the pure pleasure of being in nature and outside,” motivations related to health and fitness are secondary; other motivations include getting away from technology, achievability, and “a concentration on oneself,” meaning relaxation and stress-release (66). Another motivation is the shared experience of walking with others, although “walking in large groups is not favoured” and “many walkers have become individualists” (66).
Then the authors present a short history of walking in Germany: from travelling journeymen learning their craft, pilgrims, bourgeois walkers in the late 18th century, to Romantic walkers “looking at the landscape as a mirror of the inner self” and, by the nineteenth century, people travelling by train to rural locations for leisure walking (67-68). Walking becomes institutionalized along with industrialization and urbanization, especially technologies that allow people to travel comfortably to areas where walking is considered particularly attractive: mountains and the ocean; walking and mountaineering clubs begin to appear in the middle of the 19th century (68). Other institutions that supported walking as a leisure activity—hostels, for instance—also come into being at the turn of the 20th century (69).
However, when the Nazis came to power, walking changed: “one of the first steps after taking power was the synchronisation of all professional and social organisations, such as the walking and mountaineering clubs” (69); in other words, they were integrated into party organizations (70). Walks were organized by the Strength through Joy programme, a Nazi organization (69). “The main aim was to establish control over leisure time and to indoctrinate Germans with Nazi ideology,” they note (70).
It wasn’t until the early 1950s that vacations became important again, but walking lost its importance because of increased vehicle ownership and the development of tourist infrastructure (70). In East Germany, though, while walking clubs were not allowed, walking became an important leisure activity (70). However, it wasn’t until the end of the 1990s that walking became a popular activity again in the west (70). Today, half of Germans enjoy nature walking. “It is often perceived as a counterbalance to urban life, the urge to move outside asphalt and concrete,” and it is
linked to a sustainable lifestyle because it is environmentally sustainable (it is a soft nature sport, strengthens the relationship with nature, needs only minimal technical infrastructure, is possible in many places, creates an awareness of the speed of nature), is economically sustainable (it facilitates regional development, secures a sustainable livelihood, offers a high value ration, creates synergistic effects, and is healthy), and socially sustainable (it is an ideal sport for small groups, is relatively cheap, is possible outside holiday times, connects people and allows a view into different life circumstances). (71)
This chapter presents another national context in which walking takes place—two national contexts, given the postwar differences between West and East Germany—and so it encourages me to think more about the contexts in which walking takes place here in Saskatchewan.
I skipped another irrelevant (to me) chapter and found myself reading Yoshitaka Iwasaki’s “Dog Walking as a Leisure Activity” (83-91). Dog walking is one of the world’s most popular leisure activities; this chapter “examines opportunities and challenges of dog walking as a leisure activity” (83), which focuses on the “intrapersonal, social and environmental factors that contextualize dog walking,” including “sociodemographic factors and urban design,” “a sense of attachment to dogs as companions, and social support of dog walkers” (83). “Attention is given to the dog-owner relationship (e.g. practice of caring), the dog’s positive effects on an owner’s cognitive beliefs about and motivation towards walking,” and “the provision of dog-supportive physical environment for dog walking” (83). “In addition, dog walking as a leisure activity can provide opportunities to promote meaning-making as another benefit of this potentially meaningful leisure engagement,” Iwasaki writes (83).
Not surprisingly, people who own dogs tend to have higher levels of physical activity, and therefore dog walking is “a method of promoting a healthy lifestyle” (83-84). In addition, dog walking helps to shape “ties between people, and between people and places in different ways” and “care is central to decisions surrounding dog walking” (84). Thus dog walking can both increase physical activity and create a heightened sense of community (84). However, some factors can encourage or discourage dog walking; proximity to an off-leash dog park, for instance, increases frequency of dog walking, while a “less-walkable street pattern was negatively associated” with participation in dog walking (84). This brief comment is interesting to me: what constitutes a “less-walkable street pattern”?
According to Iwasaki, “dog walking is considered as a social activity whereby an individual gets to know other dog owners, performs an outdoor physical activity, and engages in communication and information sharing” (85). In addition, “the perception of dogs as a subjective being and one’s connectedness with them seem to provide opportunities for meaning-making within one’s life through actively engaging with dogs” (86). Dog owners share emotional bonds with their dogs (86), and those emotional bonds become “a way of finding meaning in one’s everyday life” (87).
I’m still curious about what kinds of walking people do, and “Walking in Switzerland: Urban and Not So Leisurely,” by Derek P.T.H. Christie, Emmanuel Ravalet and Vincent Kaufmann (92-99), provides some data about how people walk. It uses the Swiss transport micro-census (MRMT2010), which “contains all transport movements in excess of 25 metres which are not entirely within a single entity, such as a train station, university campus or shopping mall” (92). The MRMT2010 database can “divide trips by their destination and motive, with the trips themselves being divided into stages” (92). According to that database, walking decreases with education and salary and access to a motor vehicle (93). In addition, walking is typically combined with other forms of transportation: the average distance for walking is 900 metres in a day (94-95). However, the median distance is only 430 metres, suggesting that most walking distances are much shorter than 900 metres, but also that a limited number are much greater, going up to a maximum of 60 kilometres (95). However, while the data may be showing less walking than people are actually doing, and most of that walking is connected to other modes of transportation (95), “a substantial proportion of the population walks very little or not at all on any given day” (96).
According to the authors’ analysis of the data, “people living in city centres or in mountain resorts reported significantly more walking (approximately 2.4 km per day) than those living elsewhere” (97). At the same time, less than 25 percent of walking trips are motivated by leisure (97). Most of the walking was part of commuting to work or a place of study (97): “Mundane descriptions, such as accessing another transport mode (e.g. walking to a bus stop or car park) or returning home after an errand, accounted for over half of the walking trips” (97). In addition, dog walking plays a minor role in walking in Switzerland (97).
Thus, “walking from A to B is far more important than walking for leisure (including dog walking) and therefore public authorities should concentrate on helping people get to and from where they live, where they work and where they use public transport” (98). In addition, walking for leisure needs to be encouraged “by setting aside walking trails within urban and suburban areas” (98).
In chapter 10, “Purposeful Leisure Mobilities: Reframing the Walk to School,” by Debbie Hopkins and Sandra Mandic, (100-08), walking, as a form of “incidental exercise,” is a way to increase physical activity among school students; it “requires fewer competencies in order to participate (e.g. compared to cycle skills or a driver’s license) and is without the requirement for mobility-enabling artefacts (e.g. bikes, helmets)” (100). Distance is a factor in walking to school: the likelihood of a student walking to school “declines substantially” when the distance to school is greater than a mile (100). These days, fewer children walk to school than ever before (100), and yet “walking to school has been identified as a powerful policy objective” because of “rising levels of childhood obesity” and “transport-related carbon emissions” (100). According to the authors,
this chapter will argue that walking to school is usually framed as a transport mode, putting walking in competition with other motorised and non-motorised forms of transport and measured by traditional transportation metrics, including distance and travel time. We argue that this framing overlooks the additional opportunities and benefits that arise from walking, and that reframing the walk to school may contribute to greater success in ATS interventions. Thus we explore purposeful leisure mobilities; a conceptualisation of the co-benefits of walking, as both an objective (i.e. to travel between home and school) and a leisure space (e.g. for individual reflection and socialising). (100-01)
They propose “that new framings of walking to school are required, that better align with insights from the mobilities literature and the articulation of walking to school found in the current research” (101).
“Research has suggested that perceptions of the physical and social environment may differ between people who walk for leisure and those who walk for transport,” they continue. “For example, the accessibility of public transport, along with trust of many people in the neighbourhood, predicted increases in walking for leisure. Yet physical environment features (such as connectivity, pedestrian crossings and local traffic speed) predicted increases in walking for transport” (101). However, the authors question whether the opposition between leisure and transport is useful, “given the complexity and variability of everyday social activities” (101). Indeed, their research suggests “that, for young adults, walking is not always perceived to be a transport mode, but rather an everyday activity” (101). Framing walking as a mode of transportation “often results in walking being understood through quantifiable, automobility-derived terms of speed, geographic proximity of A to B, and derived demand” (101), but “walking is the antithesis of the dominant, pace-driven mobility system,” because it is slow, “intertwined with concepts of mindfulness,” and “about ‘the political, cultural and aesthetic implications and resonance of these movements,’” their meanings, and the embodied experiences they enable (the authors cite Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman here) (101).
Their research proceeds from “a moderate social constructionist position,” which recognizes both social, cultural, and environmental forces and individual agency, the way that meanings “are constructed by human actions and interpretations” (101). Their research findings come from an interdisciplinary, multi-method study on transport to school behaviours at high schools in Dunedin, a city in New Zealand; they are particularly interested in exploring “alternative framings of walking to school as purposeful leisure” (101-02). They conducted focus groups of high-school students, which elicited “in-depth, nuanced social perceptions of walking to school” (102).
The students did understand walking as a form of transportation and felt it was only viable for students who lived near their school (103). “This traditional, and constraining, lens was articulated by many of the focus group participants and links together notions of proximity and time, which could be interpreted as perceptions of walking as a slow mode of transport,” the authors contend (103). Students were concerned about the amount of time it would take to walk to school and about having to wake up earlier in order to make that journey on foot (104). The hills in Dunedin also featured as barriers to walking (104). According to their conversations with students, walking for transportation was considered to be different from walking for exercise—one student would get up early to walk for exercise with her mother, and then be driven to school—which “can signal the different meanings and expectations associated with types of walking” (104). Other students worried about what they might look like if they walked to school (104)—sweaty and disheveled, perhaps?—and some students thought that only rich people could afford to live close enough to school that the distance would be walkable (104).
“From the focus groups we found evidence of multiple, often competing ‘walking as leisure’ framings, which, to varying degrees, challenge or complement the traditional transport frame of walking,” the authors continue (104). Research participants identified places where they liked to walk, “pleasant environments to be enjoyed and experienced,” or places that were inaccessible to other modes of transportation (104). Research participants also talked about the experience of walking to school, in particular the way it produces an awareness of the walker’s surroundings, which suggests “that there can be values to walking to school that go beyond health benefits and reduced carbon emissions, whereby walking enables students to learn about and experience the local environment. This type of enjoyment and experiential learning might be overlooked through the traditional transport framing” (104). Some participants talked about the benefits of having time to think, time to prepare for the day, while walking: “These attributes underscore the leisurely values of walking that can be neglected by a speed/pace focus. For these students, the speed of travel is less important than reflective opportunities enabled through time spent walking” (104).
Did the students enjoy walking? Yes, a few did: one “positioned the period of time that he spent walking as a transition between school and home; the demands on his attention and the stress of home life and school life are temporarily suspended” (105). “The independence and freedom of walking for high school students was also articulated in this research,” the authors note (105). In addition, walking was also identified as a social activity, something that groups of friends could do (105). This finding “highlights the way walking interacts with individual or collective processes and norms” (105). Students who walked to school identified “more nuanced meanings of walking, which go beyond the function of travel from A to B,” including pleasure and independence (105).
This research suggests that the benefits of walking go beyond traditional transportation discourses “and present a conceptualisation of walking to school that relates more closely to leisure mobilities” (106). “The purposeful nature of these mobilities lies in the directed travel between places (i.e. from home to school). We therefore propose that ‘purposeful leisure’ could present a new framing that cold be beneficial for the promotion of walking as part of an active transport promotion intervention,” the authors contend (106). This framing is a departure from the “traditional focus of transport researchers on specific categories of travel (e.g. commuting, leisure, business) or spheres (e.g. walking, driving, or travelling virtually)” which “treats these movement as separate and self-contained”; in contrast, their research “illuminates the range of ways that walking is experienced by high school students and suggests that reframing the walk as purposeful leisure rather than transport, could expose more nuanced ways that mobility is performed” (106). Indeed, “for some high school students, negotiating the urban space, using short cuts and accessing new parts of the city, contributes to the attractiveness of walking and experiences of the city” (106). Their research participants articulated experiences of the city they gained by walking to school: “routes of particular meaning, taking short cuts, and enjoying nature, that would be missed if other modes were used” (106). “This research exposes both experiences of walking as a space for quiet, reflection and preparation, but it also highlights the sustained physical and emotional sensations, feelings of happiness and positivity, after walking,” the authors contend (106), noting that specific geographical and socio-cultural and socio-economic contexts will generate “nuanced, place-based and localised perceptions” of walking (107). In any case, “a ‘walking as purposeful leisure’ framing may help to overcome any stigma attached to these perception[s], and could contribute to interventions to increase walking to school among high school students” (107). Their research findings “present a new lens through which to view the benefits of walking to school; benefits that could transform future interventions” (107). While traditional transportation-focused comparisons may end up defining walking as “conceptually demoted” as a slow or inconvenient mode of transportation, “framing walking for transport as ‘purposeful leisure’ may overcome some barriers” (107).
In chapter 9,“Spiking: The Quest for Challenge and Meaning Among Hikers” (109-18), Ron McCarville and Chantel Pilon note that walking is good for you and that recent research has discovered that walkers felt detached from their problems and released from responsibilities (109). That detachment “may be enhanced when the walking takes place in natural settings”: “It seems that interaction with . . . nature can be profoundly positive for the walker” (109). “The popularity of walking may also be enhanced by its inherent flexibility”—in other words, there are fewer restraints involved in walking compared to other leisure activities (109). This flexibility: is important: “Walkers may choose from an array of distances, terrains and conditions. They may explore their own back yard or may travel the globe to experience hikes organised and coordinated by others. Their journeys may take place over several months on iconic routes like the Appalachian Trail, El Camino or the Milford Track, or may be completed before lunch” (109). Because of this flexibility, “we know that walkers and hikers will self-select settings that best meet their own particular requirements,” and that “this flexibility helps paraticipants explore, express and develop sense of self,” because they can “choose from activities, challenges and locations that meet their own interests and capabilities. . . . As their preferences are expressed, notions of self are challenged or affirmed” (109).
However, what if the goal of the hike is to induce rather than reduce stress? what if the hike isn’t about tranquility and reflection? (109). This is the goal of “spiking”: “the phenomenon in which traditionally noncompetitive activities (like hiking) are approached with a competitive spirit” (110). “Spiking,” short for “sport hiking” (110), has three characteristics: “1) the primary motive is overcoming a challenge; 2) the degree of difficulty is enhanced by self-imposed conditions; and 3) specific goals are set such that these conditions render goal attainment uncertain” (110). According to the authors, “the goal of spiking is to enhance and even celebrate” the challenge associated with hiking (110). For example, spikers undertake the “rim to rim” challenge at the Grand Canyon, a hike of 24 miles with a vertical drop/climb of about 9,000 feet (110) in a short period of time:
many sources recommend that hikers allocate two to three days to complete this very difficult hike. However, the spiking spirit is both ingenious and diabolical. Enthusiasts continue to add to the challenge. Much of the rim-to-rim coverage is highlighting ever more aggressive time limits for completing this route. Many of those who complete the challenge report doing so in a single day. but the challenge continues to grow. Recently, a small group has begun to toy with the idea of hiking rim to rim to rim. (110)
Choosing to increase the difficulty of such a hike is an exercise in spiking (110). Unlike typical tourists, “spiking excursions may seek anything but the ideal”: “The goal is to seek out challenge; and (perhaps) to rejoice in the discomfort that the challenge might bring” (111). Hardship may be associated with challenge, but “overcoming a challenge seems the more central interest” (111).
Challenge needs to be balanced with skill, though, so that the participant can enter into a flow experience: “The more difficult it is to negotiate the balance, the more profound and meaningful the experience” (112). Because “spiking permits hikers to choose challenges/parameters that best meet their personal skills and goals. . . . hikers can best express their own values, abilities and skill sets” through the challenges they pursue (112). “Challenge and the potential to overcome that challenge stir the heart of the spiking community,” the authors contend. “This represents considerable opportunity for tourism providers. Locations and venues that can promise challenge will gain the attention of the spiking community” (112).
Spikers often share their adventures, using blogs to do so (113). Those blogs “may promote, guide and direct the spiking efforts of others,” who desire to emulate the challenges they read about (113). Spiking has a shadow, however: the risk of personal injury, which can be life-threatening (114-15). Any usually non-competitive activity, like birding, has “spiking potential” (116); in fact, the idea of spiking “can be applied to almost any setting” (116). The solo, durational walks of artists like Richard Long or Hamish Fulton might be considered forms of spiking, but I’m not sure that their primary goal is challenging themselves physically or mentally. Spiking also suggests that the range of activities in which people are willing to engage can extend far beyond relatively short, convivial walks. I find myself wondering what kinds of walking are actually anti-democratic, given the way that people engage in spiking out of desire and interest.
In chapter 12, “On the Beaten Track: How Do Narratives from Organised Hiking Differ from ‘Real’ Hiking Narratives?” (119-26), Outi Rantala and Seija Tuulentie write that “there is an emerging market for soft adventure holidays offering convenient, risk-assessed and quality-assured hiking experiences for people with little wilderness experience”—in contrast to the ideal Finnish hiker, “a Jack-London type lonely wolf surviving easily in wilderness” (119). These “commercial hiking holidays are described in terms of easiness of accessing beautiful scenery, convenience, and no-need-for-previous-experience” (119). They are not like traditional hikes in Finland:
Traditional, independently arranged hiking in Finnish Lapland means walking fairly long distances, carrying quite heavy backpacks with equipment for camping out, and having some orienteering and fire-making skills. On the other hand, infrastructure such as open huts and fireplaces are available easily for everyone. Everyman’s rights permit walking almost everywhere, and nature can be regarded as safe. Despite the relative easiness of hiking terrain, good infrastructure and well-marked trails, demand exists for organised hiking trips. (119)
The authors want to know how the experiences of hiking differ between independent hikers and those participating in an organized hike (119). That’s the language they’re using:
The concept of hiking refers here to trips that include long-distance walks across mountain areas or woods, and at least one overnight stay. By organised hikes, we refer to trips that have been arranged by tourism companies or outdoor and other associations, and which have a participation fee. Organised hikes also differ from independent hikes in that the group members do not know each other beforehand, and the group has a guide or a leader. In addition, luggage transportation may be arranged and accommodation provided by local enterprises. These arrangements make the organised hikes naturally more costly, but also more safe and easy, than the independent hiking trips. (119)
However, the authors note that “both types of hiking include a lot of walking along paths or terrain, which requires good physical condition and appropriate clothing and shoes” (119).
Their data consist of narratives about both kinds of hiking, posted on blogs or published in book form (120). They write that “there is a difference between online diaries produced by ‘real’ hikers and those produced by persons participating in organised hiking trips. Organised hiking trip narratives were more often published on the organisers’ websites instead of independent blogs or diaries” (120). The authors focus on practices “that seem to differentiate the ‘real’ hikers from commercial ones in Finnish Lapland: finding the way, setting up the camping area, and adventuring” (121), but they also “focus on issues that are common to the walking experiences of both types of hikers’ narratives” (121).
“Orienteering, or simply finding one’s way in the wilderness dominates the narratives of independent hikers”: getting lost, finding the path, are essential parts of narratives of independent hikers (121). “The practice of finding one’s way . . . brings together the previous embodied experience of hiking in the wilderness and the hours spent preparing for the trip by reading maps, counting kilometres, evaluating the fitness of each hiking companion, learning about the spots to find fresh water, and checking the weather forecast,” they write (122). In addition, “the descriptions of way-finding often refer to the process of learning—learning the best route, learning how to walk on rocky ground, or learning not to trust other people’s advice” (122). Hikers also need to be ready to change plans quickly (122). In contrast, while way-finding is also present in narratives of participants from organized hiking trips, they usually take a visual form: “paths show the way, but they also give perspective to the pictures of open landscape” (122). In other words, while “independent hikers use way-finding as a plot in their narrative or fill the narration of way-finding with thick description,” participants in “organised hiking use pictures related to way-finding more as proof of being in a certain spot and as marking where the path next takes them. Thus, the expectations are not forwarded towards the embodied knowledge of not getting lost” (122).
“Similar to way-finding, the parts of narratives that describe setting up the camp for a night and sleeping in the wilderness are thick with expectations and modalities,” they continue (122). For independent hikers,
the practice of setting up the camp is very much intertwined with the practice of walking—both because the longer it takes to find a good spot to set up the camp, the longer one needs to walk and carry their heavy backpack with all the gear related to sleeping, and because the rhythms of walking and sleeping impact each other. Sleeping out in the wilderness does not form a break from the day’s activities for independent hikers, but is rather an integral part of the experience where the walking body is in a lying position on the same ground that is trodden by feet during the hike. (122)
Narratives about setting up camp are bound up with narratives about weather; storms and hard rain bring out “strong emotions such as fear,” partly because they are not typical in Finland (122). Other weather challenges reported include wind and hot temperatures (122). In the narratives of independent hikers, “the freedom of setting up camp anywhere in the wilderness and freedom to change plans is apparent throughout the stories. . . . It is the freedom of choosing the place to set up camp, but also the embodied skill needed to be able to do so, that differentiates the narratives between the two groups of hikers” (123).
Photographs taken by independent hikers and participants in organized hikes resemble each other—because the landscape is the same, and because the images suggest the way adventure is constructed “through hiking in a special and prestigious destination” (123). “However, the independent hikers add another layer of adventure to the narration by describing when something unexpected happens in this landscape—when the vastness of the wilderness or the hardness of the rocky ground causes changes to the planned hike,” the authors suggest. “The unexpectedness refers to risks that are apparent in hiking in the (relatively safe) wilderness and mastery of the risky conditions. Outdoor adventure tourism is, however, as much about mastering the risks as about communion with nature and therefore various methods can be used to construct expectations related to adventure in the narratives of hikers” (123).
“The communion with nature is referred to when the rhythm of walking and sleeping is changed to match better the rhythm of nature” in the thick description of the hikers’ engagements with the natural world (123). However, “sociability is also a significant focus of the narratives,” both in those created by independent hikers and to the participants in organized trips: “Independent hikers often report being with friends and meeting other hikers, while the participants of the arranged trips have to adjust their walking to that of the group of previously unknown participants and the guide” (123). Sociability is related to safety, since hiking alone is dangerous, and in the arranged trips, that relationship is intensified, because the members of the group don’t know each other before beginning the hike (124). Participants in organized hikes often write about finding solitude and avoiding social action as a moral imperative: “Because of these expectations related to the wilderness experience, it is not surprising that some of the participants of the organised hikes want to emphasise that it is possible to be alone in a group; to walk alone and only have pauses and nights together, or the notion of the group being so small that it is possible to feel the wilderness” (124). However, social relationships end up strained when something goes wrong (124).
“Another important part of the narratives, which is common to both independent and organised hikers, is the expression of surviving and exceeding oneself,” the authors report (124). Achievement means different things to different people, but it is central, and difficulties make the achievement more memorable (124). Indeed, without difficulties, there is often no story to tell: “the Finnish narratives convey an intensity of experience, when something ‘really happened’ during the journey. When the route is lost, the weather gets worse or some small injury happens, the narrative gets more layered” (125). Thick description also emerges “when decisions about the change of route or place to set up camp have to be made, or when there is hesitation if the hikers have lost their way” (125). Hiking in a group is a sociable experience, both in independent and arranged hikes, but “the possibility of solitude is strong” (125).
In their conclusion, the authors note that the main difference between the two kinds of hiking “relates to making decisions related to way-finding and setting up the camp. The narratives of either deciding to continue the trip as planned or to take a step away from the planned route and rhythm were full of expectations. The continuous decision making, based on embodied knowledge and sensory perception of weather, is an important part of independent hikers’ experiences, but is not apparent in participating in an organised hike” (125). All of this strikes me as relevant to discussions of solo, durational walking practices as compared to some, but certainly not all, participatory or convivial art walking projects. I know that when I have participated in walks curated by my friend Hugh Henry, I haven’t worried about way-finding or where to camp, because those decisions have been made in advance. In contrast, when I’ve walked alone, I’ve gotten lost and often been puzzled about where to camp. I wonder if the same is true of some convivial walking projects. If the route is determined in advance, there will be less flexibility and also perhaps less anxiety for participants—but more for the organizers of the walk, I would think, who are responsible for the safety, well-being, and quality of experience of participants.
Chapter 13, “Comparisons Between Hikers and Non-Hikers in Iceland: Attitudes, Behaviours and Perceptions,” by Anna Dóra Sæþósdóttir, C. Michael Hall and Þorkell Stefánsson (127-36), looks at hiking and walking is an important part of the tourist experience in Iceland (128). The authors surveyed hikers and non-hikers—both Icelanders and foreign tourists—and discovered that hikers were more likely not to like roads, bridges, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, visitors centres, and power plants; however hikers were more in favour of mountain huts and campsites (131). On the other hand, non-hikers thought designated footpaths, walkways, picnic places and markings on places of interest were important (131). “However, enjoying peace and unspoilt nature, walking without seeing structures, having few other tourists around, seeing no trace of off-road driving, and no trace of others having been there, of marked walking routes and campsites with facilities, and to be able to camp wherever they want and where they do not hear or see others, are all more important to hikers than non-hikers,” they suggest (131-34). In addition, hikers were more negative about power lines than non-hikers (134). Hikers also tend to perceive Highland areas as “safer, more natural and more accessible than non-hikers” (134). In their conclusions, the authors note that 80 percent of international tourists visit Iceland because of its natural environment, “which makes it a resource for the tourism industry, as well as for energy generation and low-cost, energy-dependent businesses such as smelters. Nevertheless, the capacity to reconcile infrastructure development with tourism is substantially limited from a visitor perspective” (134-35). Therefore, if the country develops power plants, energy-dependent industries, and power lines in Highland areas, tourists may not return—although only 10 percent of visitors surveyed engaged in hiking, although that activity was more prevalent in the Highlands (135). The authors conclude that “hikers perceive and understand the landscape in a different way from non-hikers. Their willingness to tolerate certain infrastructure or evidence of environmental disturbance is more limited than non-hikers” (135). Perhaps the hikers expect an unspoiled or even curated landscape, whereas other tourists have lower expectations?
I skipped half a dozen chapters that were not relevant to my work and landed on chapter 22: Hannelene Schilar’s essay “The Solo-Hike: A Journey of Distance and Closeness” (223-31). Schilar walked 800 km on hiking rails in Sweden, Norway, and Finland over three months in the summer of 2014—alone: she was “curious about what thought and solitude would do to me” (223). As a researcher, she was skeptical about those motivations, however, and observant of the experience and interested in what others are looking for “out there” (223). Her hikes were her fieldwork; she met 16 other solo-hikers during her journey “and sought to grasp their aspirations as well as experiences” through unstructured interviews, with leading questions as prompts (223). Those leading questions included “What do they seek out there? What is solo-hiking about? What does it feel like?” (223). Those questions “emphasize the phenomenological stance of the project” (223). “Striving to translate the phenomenological approach into practice, my work has been characterized by moving forward, not only on the paths, but interview by interview—building, rebuilding and discarding hypotheses, seeking a deeper understanding of the solo-hiking experience,” Schilar writes (224). She met her interview subjects as another solo-hiker, an equal “sharing their experiential world and building a trust-based relationship” (224), and her hiking became the basis of her PhD dissertation (224).
“Initially, the solo-hike disguises itself as a celebration of solitude and independence,” Schilar writes. “Solitude is never seen as boring, but in its calm and beautiful moments, it gets lonely at times” (224). So while solitude “allows a deeper engagement with and profounder experiences of the natural surroundings” and an experience of independence—“a somewhat Romantic vision of the solitary walker”—“there is more than the mere being alone, isolation, intensity or independence to the solo experience” (224). Some solo hikers do not choose to walk alone, but do that by default (224). Paradoxically, being alone means meeting more people: “actual solitude is a much-negotiated attribute of the trip; and what appears a search for solitude can in reality be a search for company” (225). For Schilar, “the solo-hiker is not a simplistic archetype—a loner or a hard-core adventurer. Rather the solo-hiker is a momentary role people are curious about or long for. This experience is often depicted in contrast to their social/family lives and symbolizes a response to it” (225).
Hiking “is very bodily and physical. Simply a forward movement. Moving forward is satisfying and natural. There is the body and its only task is the path” (225). “You just go ahead,” she writes. “A hundred, two hundred, three hundred kilometres. Sometimes you stumble. Sometimes it rains. It is exhausting” (225). In their descriptions of the physical experience, “people speak of challenge, struggle, pain and an encounter with their limits. It should be emphasized that the attraction lies again in the difference to the challenges of everyday life” (225). She writes that “some people might come in the first place because of an encounter with their psychic boundaries (work, family, etc.). So, out there they play with their physicality and test their bodies instead, which seems to establish a different way of proving oneself. Thus, walking is seen as bringing physique and psyche in balance” (226).
Schilar’s particular interest is in “the construction of adventure and awayness through the forward movement” of solo-hiking (226). She suggests that “the physical nature of walking and experiences of liminality become exploited in people’s storytelling to construct some form of adventurer-identity: moving forwards, the solo-hiker becomes an adventurer” (226). People use humour to turn risky experiences into adventure stories where they are heroically pitted against the natural world (226). In this way, solo-hiking is a form of performance: “I remember when I walked without seeing anybody for hours or sometimes days. You walk completely alone, unobserved. When you then spot a person on the horizon something strange happens: you become aware of your body through the eyes of the other, how you walk, what you look like; you immediately censor your behaviour” (226-27). Some solo hikers take selfies—another kind of performance (227). Solo-hikers “seek an adventure aesthetic and the forward movement is a becoming: first, through their physical embodiment, and second, through their narratives” (227).
“Further, the forward movement brings the solo-hiker away,” Schilar writes. “Away from real life, the city, work, technology and society. It is about being somehow close to nature and far away from ‘all this’” (227). Hikers thus make a distinction between urban life and nature which implies frustration with and critique of urban life—its speed, the way it destroys the natural world through resource extraction and consumerism, its anonymity and coldness (227). In contrast, nature is seen as “less harsh, but offering calm, relaxation and peace” (227). “In this respect,” Schilar writes,
nature is a place that is away and distant, not necessarily in terms of geographical distance, but distant and different in terms of experience. Moving forward, the solo-hiker enters and explores another experiential world, another lifeworld. Time and space are perceived differently: they evaporate or dissolve. People speak of following the flow of the day and inner rhythm instead of a schedule or a clock. They also describe a different way of place-making that is free and unconstrained. They have the feeling of being able to go anywhere, to make places their own by simply putting up the tent and give them meaning. They tell about a deep engagement with place and particularly the path. (227)
The natural world “and its construction stand very much in relation to real life. The solo-hikers strive to travel and live outdoors, collect new experiences and return. Again the appeal lies in the temporariness of the experience” (228). The hike is thus not “an escape, but rather an establishment of balance” (228). That balance embraces not only “the here and there, but also the inner/outer, mental/physical” (228).
According to Schilar, the solo-hike can be “understood as an inwards turn, exploration of the self and its place within the life path,” and it gives “a frame for thought,” which is seen as desirable (228). It is an experience of flow (228) and a meditation or inner exploration (228). However, solo-hikers aren’t clear about how those inner processes are connected to their journey: “Occasionally, it is expressed that the simplicity of tasks (walking, eating, camping) liberates the mind. Yet, I remember these also occupy the mind greatly: How far have I walked? What will I cook? Where will I put my tend?” (228). Her interviewees tended “to feel more calm and orderly in their minds, without knowing how” (228). She argues “that the walking path and the individual life path are closely intertwined. So, some people seek to overcome specific life events (death, separation, loss of job[)]” while for others “the path symbolizes a rite of passage between childhood and maturity” (228). “Popular culture is full of tales of salvation through solo-hiking,” and these narrative raise “critical questions: Is that a promise? Does the solo-hike always function the way people hope for or expect? Is there always a rewarding inner experience?” (228). For that reason, there’s a need for longitudinal approaches, “to explore the wide range of experiences that individuals gain when turning inwards and when placing the solo-hike within their life paths” (229). Schilar concludes, “While it could at first seem that the solo-hike stands isolated in time and space, seemingly remote and alone, the material emphasized instead the embeddedness of the solo-hiking experience within a specific social, societal context and point in life” (229).
I skipped most of the book’s third section, on the establishment and management of hiking trails, and found myself at chapter 25, “Rambling On: Exploring the Complexity of Walking as a Meaningful Activity,” by Kirsty Finnie, Tania Wiseman and Neil Ravenscroft (253-63). “Walking is the most popular leisure activity in the UK,” they begin, although people walk less now than they used to, “many healthy walking initiatives have failed,” and “more than half of the adults in England are not meeting the minimum recommendations for physical activity,” especially men (253). There is a gender divide in walking: “men do not benefit from simple physical activities such as walking to the extent that women do, which can impact negatively on men’s health and well-being, especially in later life” (254).
To find out why men walk, “[a] qualitative study using a phenomenological approach to analyse semi-structured interviews was designed. This design allowed the exploration of the participants’ experiences of walking as a meaningful activity” (254). Participants were eight men interviewed about walking by a BBC radio podcast about rambling in the UK, interviews that took place in rural settings chosen by the participants—the authors were looking for “a rich description of the meaning of walking outdoors to men” (254-55).
The findings of the analysis of those interviews suggested that “[o]ne of the main motivations found was to take the time to notice the setting. Participants made a point of commenting on their surroundings over the course of the walk, which was often linked and intertwined with the past, the place and nature” (256). Participants commented on how the space where they were walking had changed over time or how it had been used in the past (256); they also talked about how “the place can evoke strong emotions and provide motivation to walk” and about the personal significance of the location (257) and discussed their connection to nature, the earth, and life itself (257). Participants also “expressed their sense of self in terms of their present selves, how the walk inspires reminiscence of past self and in terms of the overall well-being experienced while walking” (257). “Participants demonstrated that walking provides opportunities to view the world differently, gaining inspiration from the surroundings and from the rhythm of walking, as well as discovering and exploring new things,” the writers suggest (259).
“This study illustrates the multifaceted and complex nature of walking as leisure, demonstrated by the three main themes and nine subthemes emerging from the data” (260). For the authors, “the benefits of walking go well beyond achieving the recommended weekly activity intake”:
Indeed, the physical benefits of the activity were routinely lost within a deeper connection with the landscape, nature and a keen sense of the past. This study thus illustrates that there are a number of different meanings for men of walking for leisure, challenging ideas of walking as simply physical exercise and men’s leisure as essentially instrumental. Walking, for these participants, provided a platform to connect with themselves and the natural environment, both in the present and the past, and to reap the benefits of these connections. (260)
These findings “offer new insights into the potential value of walking for men”:
Chief among these insights is that—unlike many of their other activities—walking can introduce sociability into men’s lives, as well as giving them an apparently safe space in which to experience themselves. Contrary to current literature, which places significance on walking in a group and values social connectedness, this study demonstrates the importance of surroundings. This was important to the participants’ experiences of meaningfulness. . . . The surroundings offered participants a sense of homecoming, belonging and familiarity, and were related to the physical environment in terms of history, landscape and nature. (260)
The research participants “described a connection to specific places, which suggests that the landscape provides cultural importance to the individual. This supports the unique value of personal experience and the finding that people access different landscapes for different reasons to meet specific needs” (260). They “reflected on aspects of themselves as part of their walking experience and these emerged in three subthemes of present, past and well-being” (260).
“Contrary to common discourse about walking, social aspects did not appear to be a key element for participants in this study,” the authors state:
Masculinity also did not emerge as a main finding within awareness of self, which may be incongruent within the social construction of men portrayed in leisure studies. This may be due to the type of walking or rambling that the men were discussing, as it could be argued that this level of activity lacks many of the more “masculine” characteristics, such as competition or stamina. (260)
The brief discussion of masculinity suggests something about walking and the performance of gender for me. Perhaps because walking is not strenuous, the “physical aspects of well-being were not commonly highlighted as a main part of engaging in walking outdoors”; nor were issues of vulnerability (260). The authors suggest that “participants may not have considered walking primarily as a form of exercise” but rather “a platform to engage in other activities” (260). “Participants were able to view the world differently, gain inspiration to feed their creativity and explore and discover new things,” they conclude. “This theme is congruent with doing, which values exploring new opportunities as a way of experiencing meaningful occupations” (260-61). While walking “offered an opportunity to be inspired,” it also “elicited a sense of adventure, which appeared to motivate many of the participants to engage in it, because they valued the unpredictability of the exercise” (261).
I skipped over a chapter that concluded that long-distance walking can be tranformative—I already knew that from experience—and read chapter 27, “Walking to Promote Increased Physical Activity” (274-87), by Ian Patterson, Shane Pegg, and Wan Rabiah Wan Omar. They suggest that “there are two categories of non-participation” in walking: “those who do not desire to participate, and those for whom constraints or barriers exist” (276-77). The authors distinguish between “internal constraints, which are seen as within the individual’s control, and external constraints, that refer to those beyond an individual’s control” (277). They suggest that “the challenge for policy makers in to identify walking intervention strategies that reduce these constraints, as well as to increase people’s motivations to walk regularly” (277).
Ethnicity, age, gender, car ownership, education, and work status are socio-demographic characteristics “pertinent to walking activity” (277). Under the heading of ethnicity, language barriers and peer non-acceptance due to cultural beliefs are barriers to physical activity, particularly for women from “diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds” (277). People tend to become less physically active as they get older (277). Women less likely to walk than men—partly because of chores in the home—but women are more likely to walk if they have friends to walk with, if they have family support, could walk with a baby in a stroller, and “had a variety of places to walk” (277); in contrast, walking for men was more associated with their level of education (277)—although how education affects men and walking isn’t clear from the chapter. Car owners walk less than people without cars (278). High levels of education and income are correlated with high levels of physical activity, although one study found no connection between people who reported being regular trail users and socio-demographic characteristics when income, race, and gender were taken into consideration (278). Being in or out of work seems to have little effect on whether people walk (278). Intrapersonal influences, including knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, personality traits influence walking behaviour (278). However, intrapersonal influences are hard to change, so the authors suggest focusing on environmental factors instead (279).
Social support is “one of the important influential determinants on walking activity,” and both formal and informal social support networks are important (279). Focusing on changing social factors regarding walking is important, but that needs to be supported with other physical interventions, such as “providing suitable facilities in order to make walking convenient” (279). For this reason, walking trails are important (280), although people need to feel they will be safe from crime on walking trails, and safe from traffic as well (280). Different trail surface materials suit different types of trail activity, but a “fine-grained surface creates an efficient environment for pedestrian travel and, more importantly, it enables wheelchair users, as well as families with babies in strollers, to use walking trails” (281). Trail width is also a consideration, as are the gradients of slopes: “The absence of hilly terrains has been found to be associated with higher levels of trail use” (281). Walking trails need to be close to communities (281)—not only close to home, but also to schools, shops, transit, open spaces (281). Trails need to have scenic views and trailside facilities, including toilets, benches, drinking fountains, garbage bins, signage, picnic tables, parking, bike racks; and, for people with disabilities, handrails, accessible toilets, seats for resting (282). Well-maintained trails attract more walkers (282). For the authors, “the most effective trails are usually generated from community input that emphasises community interest,” so “it is important to consider a range of people’s perspectives in the design of trails, in order to encourage greater interest in walking” (282). They conclude that “a multi-level intervention is the most desirable option to achieve increased walking activity” (282). I found the brief discussion of gender and walking in this chapter interesting, but I would’ve liked to know more about why and how men and women walk differently.
I skipped a chapter on leisure walking and began reading Giovanna Bertella’s “Dog Walking in Urban Greenspaces” (300-08). Although this chapter seemed far from my research, it yielded the term “‘soft fascination’”: “a combination of light physical activity, effortless concentration and aesthetic pleasure” (300). “Soft fascination is often described by the pleasure deriving from various sources, such as, for example, the observation of vegetation and animals, at a distance removed from urban landscapes, typically studded with offices and shops,” Bertella writes (300). I would like to know more about “soft fascination” and its connection to different kinds of walking.
“The companionship of a dog usually motivates people to use urban greenspaces for daily walks,” Bertella states, although some studies indicate “that simple ownership of a dog does not necessarily lead to performance of daily walks” (300). “Nonetheless, it can be said that urban greenspaces provide a leisure-oriented landscape to which many dog guardians daily bring their canine companions to play, exercise and socialise with other dogs and humans” (300). This study focuses “on those aspects related to the dog guardian’s mental well-being, understood as an experience of pleasure, happiness, sense of meaning and self-realisation” (300). Dog walking is one way the relationship between dogs and their owners manifests itself; it “can be described as a daily ritual shaped by a combination of the guardians’ conceptualisation of their dogs and other more practical considerations, such as, for example, the time available for the activity, and the physical conditions and characteristics of the dog” (300-01). Because dog walking is “motivated by a strong sense of responsibility as a result of interspecies love and respect” and is “designed to satisfy the dogs’ physical and mental needs to be active,” it “can be described as a leisure-friendly obligation”:
Dog walking is about commitment and responsibility, as well as enjoyment and relaxation. Thus, the dog walking experience can be situated between the obligation the person feels towards the animal and the pleasant aspects of the activity that, from the perspective of the human, is centred on a strong emotional attachment to the dog as well as personal positive output in the form of soft fascination. (301)
There’s that term “soft fascination” again: I’m going to have to learn more about that.
Bertella’s study used an autoethnographic, narrative methodology: she reported her experiences of dog walking in Florence, Italy, and Tromso, Norway, in both summer and winter, in a diary (301). Those diary entries were then categorized thematically (301-02). Her findings suggest that the dog-walking experience is “an interspecies ritual,” and its repetitive aspects generate a sense of security for participants (303). The experience is shared with other dog-human couples (303), and dog walkers tended to see themselves as a group of like-minded people (303). In this way, “dog walking in urban greenspaces promotes the emergence of spontaneous interspecies communitas. These are social entities which include people and dogs—the latter viewed as significant others—that emerge as temporary states of affectual bonding created through direct mutual interaction and the recognition of similar lifestyles” (304).
“Several aspects of the dog walking experience . . . can be related to the concept of soft fascination”: ideas of relaxation and reflection, of getting away from obligations to people (family members or colleagues), and of spending time alone (304). According to Bertella, “[t]he dog in particular seemed to be perceived as a special significant other with whom the person could be entirely her- or himself” (304). “The data suggest also that dog walking was perceived as experiencing a sort of domesticated nature, characterised by vegetation and animals, as well as by human built objects, such as benches and—in the case of Florence—monuments,” she writes. “In this sense, it was an experience somewhere in between being in nature and being in a human-built environment” (304). In addition, “dog walking was sometimes described as an alternative way to see and live in the town” (305).
Dog walkers tended to respond to the urban environment through their interpretations of the animals’ perception of the environment (305); “[t]hus, dog walking can be described as a sort of in-between experience—an experience between an obligation and a leisure, an experience of being together and being alone, being in nature and being in town, being a human and being an animal” (305). It is a liminoid experience, both “a means of escaping from the realities [of] everyday responsibilities, but also as opportunities for individual movement and expression” (305). Dog walking is also an ethical experience: it depends “on the conceptualisation that the guardian has of his or her dog and, presumably, of dogs in general” (306). Dog walkers sometimes reflected “on both their attitudes towards, and beliefs about, different animal species, and also about the value of each animal, viewed as a unique individual and not just as a member of a specific species” (306). In this way, urban dog walking is complex: it can be understood through concepts like communitas and liminoid experience, and it “can be important in terms of soft fascination, and can also be a meaningful experience in terms of security and freedom” (306). It also offers people “the possibility of finding harmony in the contrasting aspects of everyday urban life” (306). Finally, it “can encourage reflection on the way we experience the physical environment and animal ethical issues, and, consequently, it can be relevant in terms of self-realization, contributing to personal growth” (306).
I still want to learn more about the differences between places that are walkable and places that aren’t, so I read chapter 30,“Walkable Places for Visitors: Assessing and Designing for Walkability” (311-29), by Yael Ram and C. Michael Hall. They note that cities,
as walking spaces, were developed for their citizens around two forms of walking facilities—streets and what Solnit described as, ‘anti-streets,’ which refers to public spaces such as parks, gardens and promenades. While the ‘streets’ reflect everyday life and, before the eighteenth century were seldom used for pleasure, the ‘anti-streets’ were often built solely for the pleasure of citizens, and especially the emerging middle classes of the industrial revolution, and were initially designated to convey or resemble high-class aesthetics. (311)
More recently, streets and parks “have become foci of research, reflecting the understanding that walking facilitates the pedestrian’s mental and physical health, and can provide environmental benefits as a mode of green mobility, as well as encourage the development and maintenance of social capital through engagement and familiarity with the neighborhood and local people” (311). Walkability is “achieved when the streets and other walking spaces provide pedestrians a secure network of connections to varied destinations, within a reasonable amount of time and effort, and offering a pleasant and interesting context” (311).
The concept of walkability is broad “and encompasses different approaches and definitions, which may lead to different design outcomes” (311). Its features include “areas being traversable, compact, physically enticing and safe, while others deal with the outcomes potentially fostered by such environments, such as making places lively, enhancing sustainable transportation options and inducing exercise” (311). Other features of walkability in the literature of the subject include the notion that it can be equated to “encouraging physical activity; close, barrier-free; safe; full of pedestrian infrastructure and destinations; and upscale, leafy, or cosmopolitan” (311). There are two key factors of walkable built environments: proximity and access (312). “Walkable trips are usually considered by urban planners as trips that take no longer than five minutes (equivalent to 400 meters) for each direction,” Ram and Hall note, suggesting that for longer trips, people prefer to drive (312). “Other factors that are often mentioned as central to walkability,” they continues, “are connectivity and continuation of the sidewalks and absence of barriers for walking; linkage to other transport modes; safety from traffic, crime and falls; the physical conditions and the quality of the path and contextual values, such as aesthetic and historic interest” (312).
However, walking also takes place within a behavioural environment “within which walking and personal decisions about walking occur” (312). “The characteristics of the built environment and the physical geography of a location, e.g. weather, steepness, together with the people who use and inhabit a location create the design and place qualities that walkers experience,” Ram and Hall contend. “These are also affected at the micro-level by decisions with respect to routes, distance, purpose of trip, as well as the time at which walking occurs; and at the macro level by the governance of walking in a particular location,” which includes factors such as “street cleanliness and garbage collection, but over longer time scales it includes path maintenance and design, public space provision, public transport availability, and the planning laws that affect urban design, density, roading and pedestrian friendliness” (312). The combination of these objective and subjective factors “provide the environment that determines perceived accessibility, as well as the behavior of walkers” (312-13).
Visitors and tourists tend to be ignored by the literature on walkability in favour of “local pedestrians” (315). However, the authors contend that “research and understanding of tourists’ walkability can be perceived as an additional important aspect of walkable places, as well as urban walkability” (315). I’m not interested in tourism, so I skipped ahead to the authors’ conclusions, where they suggest that “the popular assumption that walkability is always good for places is simplistic and neglects issues of design and assessment. For the urban destination as a whole, walkability is probably an advantage, but there is a lack of reliable and valid measurement tools to confirm it” (324). The chapter’s bibliography of studies on walkability gives me a place to begin trying to understand that concept better. I want to know whether my city is walkable, compared to other cities where convivial or participatory walking takes place, and whether walkability is a feature in the development of a walking culture that would support participatory walking events and projects.
I skipped over the rest of the book, which focused on tourism and the design of walking trails—I’m not interested in either topic. The concluding chapter was repetitive and not of much interest. Nevertheless, The Routledge International Handbook of Walking was useful as an introduction to the way social scientists think about walking, and ideas like walkability and soft fascination will be worth following up on. To what extent are psychogeographic or mythogeographic walks, for instance, ways of experiencing a form of soft fascination, perhaps in environments that might not tend to generate that response, even though, on the surface, soft fascination appears to be the antithesis of what that kind of walking seeks? Is walkability an unspoken requirement for participatory or convivial walking events? I’ve ended up with a long list of articles to read after finishing this book, and no doubt that’s a good thing. I’m broadening my ideas about walking. That’s the point of this exercise, so I’m heading in the right direction.
Works Cited
Hall, C. Michael, Yael Ram, and Noam Shoval, eds. The Routledge International Handbook of Walking, Routledge, 2018.
Holloway, Dan. Six Self-Publishing Surprises.” The Guardian, 30 July 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/30/six-self-publishing-surprises.