Another day, another article on walking in the city: this time, it’s Salmiah Abdul Hamid’s discussion of walking behaviour in Glasgow. One of my hunches—hypotheses, if you want to get fancy about it—is that there’s a culture of walking in the UK that is absent where I live in Canada. I’m having trouble moving that idea beyond a hypothesis, and since I’m not a social scientist, I don’t have the tools to conduct a study to support that contention, but I’m slowly finding enough support to put some meat on its bones—some boots on its feet, perhaps.
Hamid asks, “Have you ever walked in your hometown in search of a new restaurant suggested to you by your colleagues?” (264). Well, in my city, you probably would drive, rather than walk, but because Glasgow is more densely populated, has greater degrees of street connectivity, and has a greater land-use mix (see Stockton et al), as I know from my experience walking in both places, you might decide to walk to that new destination. Hamid suggests that while searching for that restaurant, a pedestrian “might be overwhelmed by the multitude of existing ‘signs’” (264). “I would suggest that users of the semiotic environment use different approaches to move about,” Hamid suggests (264). That seems to be his hypothesis.
Hamid studied pedestrian activity in the city centre of Glasgow. “Given the large geographical scale of Glasgow, there are more activities in the city centre such as shopping or arts and cultural performances,” he writes. “In terms of the urban context, Glasgow is very ‘pedestrian-friendly,’” with broad sidewalks (264) and large areas that are closed to vehicular traffic. “In this study, the empirical investigation into how signs influence human mobility in an urban environment was conducted through tracking pedestrians’ routes on foot,” he continues (264). His research had two objectives: to investigate how pedestrians act when they are searching for directions in cities, and to explore “mobile methods applications” for tracking their movements (264).
First, Hamid sets out his theoretical framework. “The way a pedestrian navigates within a space depends on the complexity of the space and how the pedestrian understands the space,” he writes (265). Pedestrians choose routes because they might be scenic or familiar, or because they are short (265). Pedestrians ignore street signs that are not relevant to them, since the majority of street signs address motorists (265). Orientation is important for pedestrians: it consists of signs and verbal aids (like asking for directions), recognition of patterns of location, habitual patterns of behaviour, and landmarks (265). Because elements of the built environment influence pedestrians’ movements and orientation, their behaviour “depends on the individual’s preferences regarding moving between spaces,” whether they are familiar and mundane or more meaningful (265).
“Understanding bodily movement in urban spaces helps us to better understand social practices,” Hamid writes. He wants to know how people navigate the “at times overwhelming milieu” of the city (265). He cites Georg Simmel’s suggestion that most city dwellers “who walk along the same streets in their daily lives tend to be more inattentive of their surroundings” (265). Simmel’s work dates back to the 1880s, but Hamid suggests it may still be relevant (265).
Next Hamid describes mobile ethnographic methods, which use a combination of field notes and still and video documentation. The point of using these methods is to “capture, track, simulate, and mimic” the behaviour of pedestrians in urban spaces as they search for their destinations (266). He makes a big deal out of using iPads for this work, although he notes that the devices have “limited functions and capabilities” (266). It’s not yet clear to me how he tracked the behaviour of pedestrians; I’m still hopeful, though, that he will explain his methodology more clearly.
Apparently, his research considered “the flow of pedestrians, the streetscape designed for pedestrians as well as the road signs within the perimeter of the urban context study,” so he documented the behaviour of pedestrians towards “the materials in place such as road signs” by using iPads to photograph and write notes (266). The study participants were randomly selected, and were both people walking alone ind in groups (268). He (or his graduate students) stood on street corners on Gordon Street in Glasgow’s city centre (near the central train station) and studied and observed peoples’ behaviour. Some of those people “referred to the city map on the street in order to reach their destination while others used their mobile phone or printed map to search for their destination” or asked other pedestrians for directions (268). Pedestrians were also traced using mobile tracking software on the iPad (268).
As a result of this study, Hamid argues that “most pedestrians considered few important elements when searching for directions,” including street names, street maps, and street signs (268). Many pedestrians ignored lights at crosswalks telling them not to cross the street (268). Street map signs “are the most important element in Glasgow to guide pedestrians to specific locations in the city centre,” and most pedestrians looked at street names, maps, or at landmark buildings (269). “However, in terms of the regulated traffic signs, most of the pedestrians were not obliged to follow the signs even though the signs are placed at the pedestrian zones,” he states (269).
Hamid conducts a “geosemiotics analysis” (269). He notes that many street signs had been tampered with by adding posters or stickers, which suggests to him that those signs were not respected by pedestrians (270). Pedestrians who were familiar with their routes ignored the signs, while pedestrians who were unfamiliar with their route (how did he know who was familiar and who wasn’t just by observing them?) paid attention to the signs. Many asked others for help or directions (270). Some pedestrians used multiple methods to find their way (271). Some pedestrians used mobile phones to figure out where they were going (271). Some pedestrians were followed and their behaviour was observed: one pair of men, who seemed to get lost looking for a restaurant, still laughed together despite their long journey (271). “Despite all the observations and tracking the bodily movement of pedestrians in Glasgow, there is still a gap in terms of the cognitive understanding,” Hamid writes. “How do we know that they understood the meaning of the signs in relation to the street maps, or whether there is a lack of informational guidance on the street which if present could ease the pedestrians’ journey and destination search [?]” (272).
Hamid seems surprised that people still use paper maps rather than their mobile phones or GPS technology (273). He notes that most of the traffic signs “were posted with ‘transgressive notices’”—in other words, that they had been vandalized—but they were still legible for pedestrians (273). Drivers paid attention to the traffic signs, but pedestrians and cyclists tended not to (273). However, he notes that his methodology made it “impossible to determine whether the pedestrians . . . understood the meanings of the signs or whether the signs were placed inappropriately or whether the pedestrians referred to the signs for guidance” (273). Men and women seemed to use the signs differently, but “it was not possible to gain any insights into the pedestrians’ thought processes when navigating the spaces” (273). For that reason, short interviews would have been useful (273).
“This paper helps to determine the natural behavior of pedestrians in their daily life through non-participant observations,” Hamid concludes (276). Mobile methods are valuable for this kind of research (276). More research is needed “to understand why and what people think and the relationship between the signs and places in a more dynamic approach and setting” (276).
This paper turned out to be pretty thin gruel—the results seem to suggest little more than what a self-aware pedestrian might conclude while walking around in Glasgow’s city centre—but then again, I’m not a social scientist and therefore not part of the paper’s intended audience. The reference to Georg Simmel might be useful, but the most interesting part of the paper, for my purposes, is the way the paper reminds me of how much people walk in Glasgow’s city centre. However, as I recall, outside that area I saw fewer pedestrians—not none, but not as many as one sees on Buchanan Street or George Street. I could write down my memories of walking in Glasgow, compare them to what it’s like walking in Regina, and call it autoethnography. And, in fact, if I can’t find any explication anywhere of a thing called a “walking culture,” that’s what I might end up having to do.
Works Cited
Hamid, Salmiah Abdul. “Walking in the City of Signs: Tracking Pedestrians in Glasgow.” Current Urban Studies, no. 2, 2014, pp. 263-78. DOI: 10.4236/cus.2014.23025.
Stockton, Jemima C. Oliver Duke-Williams, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Jennifer S. Mindell, Eric J. Brunner, and Nicola J. Shelton. “Development of a Novel Walkability Index for London, United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Application to the Whitehall II Study. ” BMC Public Health, vol. 16, no. 416, pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-016-3012-12.