Tag: Emily Talen

Jennie Middleton, “‘Stepping In Time’: Walking, Time, and Space In the City”

I have accumulated a pile of articles on a variety of topics, and I am determined to work through them, somehow. So this morning, before turning to the reading I really should be doing, I’m going to return to Jennie Middleton’s “‘Stepping in Time’” Walking, Time, and Space in the City.” I started this article weeks ago, and then I put it aside. I hate to leave anything unfinished, so I’m coming back to it this morning.

I started reading this article as part of my excursion into debates around walkability. I wasn’t quite finding what I was looking for in this literature, and that might be a sign that it’s not there, that I’m going to have to make up my own theory about walkability and culture. Maybe that’ll work; maybe it won’t. Maybe someone reading this blog will let me know where I can find discussions of cultures of walking and their connection to the walkability of places where people live. For now, I’m stumbling around, reading these articles, hoping to find something that supports my hunch about walking in the city where I live.

That hunch is simply this: walking in this city—except in two places, the park and, to a lesser degree, on the path along the creek, which tends to be used by cyclists rather than pedestrians—is an eccentric activity, and I rarely see other people walking here, because the urban form here discourages walking, since it isn’t, according to what I’ve been reading, particularly walkable. The city where I live lacks population density, street connectivity, and a mixture of land uses (see Stockton et al), all of which promote functional walking. For that reason, it does not satisfy the hierarchy of needs Mariela Alfonzo describes: feasibility, accessibility, safety, comfort, and pleasurability (see Alfonzo). It also lacks what Michael Southworth calls “path context” (Southworth 251), or what I’ve been calling “texture density”: simply put, it tends to be a dull, uninteresting place to walk. Even areas of the big park, Wascana Centre, are dull deserts of lawn, a boring monoculture that can be painful to walk across on a hot summer day—or a day in winter when the temperature is below minus 30. All of these factors are interrelated in complex ways. Because the city lacks walkability, people don’t walk here—they drive instead, partly because driving is cheap and easy (see Forsyth 279)—and, as a result, there’s no culture of walking.

In other words, walking in this place is an eccentric activity; it’s not normal for adults who could drive to ambulate instead. That lack of a walking culture feeds the lack of walkability here. Why should the city invest in sidewalks or signalized crosswalks when nobody would use them or complains about their lack? I’m sure city councillors hear more complaints about potholes than they do about broken or missing sidewalks. More importantly for my purposes, it means that the forms of walking that exist in more walkable places—guided tours, promenades, heritage walks, rural rambles—don’t tend to exist. Many forms of participatory, convivial artistic walking are reactions against those pedestrian modes and models. Are those forms of participatory, convivial artistic walking possible in contexts where the types of walking to which they respond—as parody, as mythographic or psychographic subversion—do not exist? In that case, are the demands that all artistic walking be participatory and convivial perhaps ignoring their own contexts—the walkability of the places where those walking events take place? I mean, what kind of convivial or participatory walking is possible in North American cities, where the distance most people consider walkable is only 1/4 of a mile (Talen 264-66)? How much convivial walking can happen if people can only walk 10 minutes before they feel they’ve gone far enough?

I’ve already blogged about one of Jennie Middleton’s essays, “Walking In the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices,” but this one, “‘Stepping In Time: Walking, Time, and Space In the City,” with its title resonant of phenomenology, caught my attention. “This paper explores walking and its relationship with and through time and space,” Middleton begins (“Stepping” 1943). Her study “reveals time as a significant dimension of pedestrian experiences” and it argues “that the relationship between walking and time is not one of clock-time passing, as pedestrian policy implies, but is made up of multiple temporalities that emerge out of, and shape, people’s experiences on foot” (“Stepping” 1943). She uses the work of Barbara Adam and Henri Bergson as a theoretical grounding “to suggest that people become aware of their own duration as they move on foot when they are made to wait” (“Stepping” 1943). She discusses space in similar terms; she is interested in “the multiple spatialities that are constituted by and practised through walking” (“Stepping” 1943). For Middleton, urban walking is “an inherently spatiotemporal experience” (“Stepping” 1943). That’s likely true of all forms of walking, too. She also suggests that notions of rhythm provide a way of engaging with the spatiotemporality of walking (“Stepping” 1944).

Middleton wants to get deeper into the experience of walking than the existing policy research on walking, which is “primarily characterised by statistical data, such as travel surveys, pedestrian counts, or local pedestrian audits” (“Stepping” 1944). Theoretical accounts of walking “are characterised by a lack of empirical exploration of the actual practice of walking” (“Stepping” 1944). So Middleton wants a different kind of empirical study. Her research has “three principal aims; first, to explore the relationship between walking and the built environment; second, to explore the many different types, forms, and characters of walking; third, to engage with the social dimensions of pedestrian movement” (“Stepping” 1944). “These research aims were interrogated across a transect through the inner London boroughs of Islington and Hackney,” she continues—I hope she explains what she means by “transect” (“Stepping” 1944). Her study “drew upon a mixed-method approach, including a postal survey, experiential walking photo diaries, and in-depth interviews” (“Stepping” 1944). The diaries asked participants to note when and where and for how long they walked—in other words, “they spatialised their experience of time on foot by producing personalised time-space budgets in the diaries” (“Stepping” 1944). Participants were also encouraged to explain why they were walking (out of necessity or by choice), how they felt about where they were walking, who they were walking with, and how they were walking (“Stepping” 1944). “The task of recording the time-space budgets was something each participant did with ease and consistency, yet a tension emerged between these recorded movements and the accompanying accounts—which made it possible to question whether walking, time, and space are experienced in such linear terms,” Middleton continues (“Stepping” 1944). Photographs of items of interest were taken by the participants using a disposable camera, and they were used as discussion prompts in the follow-up interviews (“Stepping” 1944). “It is by engaging with the discursive organisation of the interview and diary accounts that the multiple temporalities and spatialities of walking are made visible, particularly in terms of how the interviewees and diarists used issues of temporality and spatiality as resources to account for their experiences as urban pedestrians,” Middleton writes (“Stepping” 1944-45).

The policy context of this study is the efforts by UK governments to decrease vehicular traffic by promoting public transport, walking, and cycling (“Stepping” 1945). Often those efforts suggest that walking can save time (“Stepping” 1945). From her research, Middleton has learned that “time is considered a limited resource and a currency not to be wasted” (“Stepping” 1945). “Issues surrounding wayfinding, routes, and shortcuts” emerge in her participants’ diaries, along with “the importance of how people talk about issues associated with time”—for instance, whether one would take a slightly longer but more pleasant route if one were in a hurry because one is late (“Stepping” 1945). The notion of time as a resource emerged throughout the data, but participants might not choose a shorter route if it happened to be less pleasant (“Stepping 1946). The diary accounts “bring into question the temporal assumptions made in transport policy of people’s desire for high-speed travel,” which are “based on the premise that ‘faster is seen to be better’” (Harris et al, qtd. “Stepping” 1946). “Yet is this really the case?” Middleton asks. “Does faster travel ‘achieve more’ than, for example, the ‘slower’ transport mode of walking?” (“Stepping” 1946).

Middleton cites John Urry and Mimi Sheller’s argument that travel time is often considered to be productive, although little attention has been paid to walking as productive time (“Stepping” 1946). “Productive” in this instance refers to the ability to get work done while travelling. Middleton’s participants noted that they are often thinking about their work while walking (“Stepping” 1946). Her participants reported that walking is less stressful than using public transportation, and that walking gives them time to think about the work they have to accomplish (“Stepping” 1947). Middleton suggests the issue of stress draws attention to “the multiple rhythms and rhythmicity of walking” compared to full buses not stopping, for instance, which disrupts the rhythm of getting to work on time (“Stepping” 1947). That disrupted temporal rhythm, and the sense of being late, is a contrast to walking to work (“Stepping” 1947). Of course, if one happens to leave late for some reason, walking can generate similar anxieties about making it to work on time—I know that from experience.

Here Middleton turns to theoretical accounts of time-geography, which tend to see time as linear, and critiques of time-geography as too linear as compared to the way people actually experience time and its rhythms (“Stepping” 1948). “So what are the multiple times and rhythms associated with walking?” she asks. “And are there other ways in which pedestrians experience time than those discussed up to this point—something more than clock time passing?” (“Stepping” 1948). Yes: in the diaries and interviews that were part of her research, “it is possible to discern how the research participants are much more than ‘urban pedestrians’ as the multiple temporalities in their walking patterns make visible their multiple identities as, for example, partners, parents, professionals, and persons in relation to others” (“Stepping” 1949). She continues, “how can further sense be made about the relationship between time and issues associated with identity?” (“Stepping” 1949).

In her participants’ diaries, Middleton sees evidence that “people temporally frame distinctions they make about who they are in relation to others” along with temporally framing other issues as well, such as their own multiple identities (as pedestrians who temper the rhythm and pattern of their walks to work in relation to the situations they have to deal with, but also in terms of their accountabilities to others as a partner, family member, and employee) (“Stepping” 1949-50). She suggests that there are different forms of time, including but not limited to linear time, the time of clocks and calendars, and that there is a disjunction between collective time and the individual felt experience of time (“Stepping” 1950). “‘Clock times,’ ‘collective times,’ and ‘timings’ mutually interact, both shaping and emerging” from the movements of her research participants (“Stepping” 1951). She uses Henri Bergson and Doreen Massey to think about “the continuity, irreversibility, and openness of time” to think about time spent walking compared to time spent waiting (at traffic lights, for instance) (“Stepping” 1951). Time expands and contracts at different moments in a walker’s journey—expanding when the walker is forced to wait (“Stepping” 1951). The walker’s sense of time and of his or her own physicality intersect (“Stepping” 1952). 

Middleton notes that Bergson’s privileging of time over space has been critiqued, particularly by Doreen Massey, who argues that they cannot be understood in isolation, and asks how pedestrian movement can be understood in light of these conceptual concerns (“Stepping” 1953). Walking, time, and space are related, because walking is a spatiotemporal practice (“Stepping” 1953). This relationship seems particularly salient in the mental maps pedestrians make of obstacles and difficult places (“Stepping” 1953). Tim Ingold has argued that wayfinding is a complex spatial practice and a means of inhabiting the world (“Stepping” 1953). A wayfarer has an active engagement with the country that opens up along his or her path, according to Ingold, and for Middleton, the mental maps her participants construct are examples of wayfaring (“Stepping” 1954). The experiences of those participants highlights “the complexity of how paths are constructed, imagined, and lived out,” as well as “how spatial practices, such as walking, are also temporal” (“Stepping” 1954). The spatiotemporal complexity of urban walking also “illustrates the significance of identity in terms of how these relations emerge and are configured” (“Stepping” 1955). 

Here Middleton returns to the notion that the rhythm of walking is conducive to thinking about other things (particularly work) (“Stepping” 1955). She cites Henri Lefebvre’s notion of rhythmanalysis here as a way of thinking about space, time, and place as interrelated (“Stepping” 1955-56). Her research participants discuss how the rhythm of walking seems to enable them to think, and how different speeds of walking make such thinking easier or more difficult (“Stepping” 1956). For Middleton, “rhythm is a way of understanding the multiple temporalities, spatialities, and corporealities of walking together. In other words, where there is rhythm of sorts, there is something to be said about time and space” (“Stepping” 1956). Thinking about walking “in relation to rhythm provides a productive means for exploring the multiple temporalities and spatialities of walking and the ways in which they interrelate,” and “by engaging with notions of rhythm . . . further sense can be made of how issues associated with identity emerge within participants’ accounts and how they relate to spatiotemporal concerns” (“Stepping” 1957-58). 

In her conclusion, Middleton notes that by thinking about the relationship between walking and time and space, “the notion of time has been reconceptualised in relation to how people move on foot from the linear temporal understandings present in current transport and walking policy” (“Stepping” 1958). Her point is “that time is an issue which is relatively neglected in current walking policy documents, or an issue bound up in the concern of transport policy for speed and efficiency,” while in contrast, for pedestrians, “time emerges as an issue of great significance for walking, with temporal concerns being drawn upon as resources in the framing of other issues” (“Stepping” 1958). Walking is more than just a mode of transport, and it should be promoted “as something which resources people’s day-to-day routines, rather than solely being framed as a healthy, sustainable transport choice”—in other words, it is “a resource for organising families, friendships, and households” (“Stepping” 1958). Along with the multiple temporalities of walking, her research “reveals the multiple spatialities that are constituted by and practised through walking. Issues associated with physical mobility difficulties illustrate how walking is an inherently spatial practice, connected to a sense of identity” (“Stepping” 1958). Finally, rhythm is “a productive means for engaging how time, space, and identity interrelate as people walk” (“Stepping” 1959).

I admire Middleton’s success in bringing a dense theoretical context and empirical research and analysis together, but I would need to read Lefebvre or Bergson, and reread Massey, before I could say very much about the results of her research. Walking research goes in surprising directions, and I’m impressed by the range of philosophical and theoretical material Middleton has brought to bear on her research participants’ experiences. Maybe I’ll get to reading Lefebvre and Bergson and Adam for this degree, although I might be better off spending my limited time—it’s a resource not just for walking—on reading more work by Tim Ingold. There are so many directions my research could travel in, and I need to be careful which paths I choose.

Works Cited

Alfonzo, Mariela A. “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs.” Environment and Behavior, vol. 37, no. 6, 2005, pp. 808-836. DOI: 10.1177/0013916504274016.

Forsyth, Ann. “What Is a Walkable Place? The Walkability Debate in Urban Design.” Urban Design International, vol. 20, no. 4, 2015, pp. 274-92. DOI: 10.1057/udi.2015.22.

Middleton, Jennie. “Walking in the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices.” Geography Compass, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 90-105. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00409.x.

Southworth, Michael. “Designing the Walkable City.” Journal of Urban Planning and Development, vol. 131, no. 4, 2005, pp. 246-57. DOI: 10.0161/(ASCE)0733-9488(2005)131:4(246).

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.

Talen, Emily. “Pedestrian Access as a Measure of Urban Quality.” Planning Practice and Research, vol. 17, no. 3, 2002, pp. 257-78. DOI:10.1080/026974502200005634.

Emily Talen, “Pedestrian Access as a Measure of Urban Quality”

At the beginning of “Pedestrian Access as a Measure of Urban Quality,” a discussion of walkability, Emily Talen notes that while some forms of urban planning “seem to agree that urban areas ought to strive for greater pedestrian access,” such access “is not formally evaluated in the context of local planning practice” (257). The purpose of this paper, she continues, is to offer “an empirical and methodological contribution to such an evaluation. It answers the question: since increasing pedestrian access to goods and services is a major objective of the current call for compact, walkable, pedestrian-oriented urban environments, how walkable are our urban environments?” (257). “The goal of this study,” she continues, “is to demonstrate how access”—I think she means pedestrian access—“can be given a more prominent role in planning practice” (257). Talen’s focus is on Portland, Oregon, a city that “does not evaluate pedestrian access in its regular planning activities” (257). 

According to Talen, assessing “the quality of a given urban environment” can be done “either subjectively or objectively, using data that are quantitative, qualitative, or a combination of both” (258). Subjective assessments use “survey-based research on residential preferences” or “cognitive mapping exercises” that contribute to an understanding of place from the perspective of residents, “although the methods employed are not necessarily designed to be applied to planning practices” (258). Objective measures, which are usually quantitative, “are critically important for planners,” and the literature is filled with such approaches. “However, the usefulness of these indicators working at the local, neighbourhood level is limited,” Talen writes, because “many indicators involve too coarse a resolution to be useful for local comparative planning analysis” (258). Because assessments of urban quality “need to be localized in a meaningful way,” their focus needs to be on distinguishing between neighbourhoods in a city, rather than between cities (as a form or ranking or comparison) (258). In addition, most indicators “do not readily accommodate evaluations of urban pattern or form” (258). “For example, although it is possible to compare urban neighbourhoods on the basis of poverty, employment and income, it is usually not possible to compare neighbourhoods on the basis of their spatial pattern, walkability or morphological character, qualities that urban planners are likely to be involved with,” Talen writes (258). She notes that INDEX software, which uses GIS technology, “produces maps that analyze the pedestrian qualities of an area,” including blocks that are too large, intersections with poor safety records, disconnected sidewalks, or areas far from bus stops (259). The way that people travel could be factored into such analyses (259). One example, according to Talen, is the Bradshaw Walkability Index, “which uses criteria such as density, off-street parking places, ‘sitting spots,’ and sidewalk ‘dips’ at each driveway to measure the walkability of an area” (259). While these approaches are important, they have not been widely used because they require a lot of data about the cityscape (259). Talen proposes “citywide evaluation of access as a function of distance”; she hopes that this approach will supplement GIS-based approaches “and demonstrate the importance of pedestrian access as an urban quality indicator” (259)

“Access is often formally defined as the quality of having interaction with, or passage to, a particular good[,] service or facility,” Talen writes (259). However, the criteria that define this access are complex. “If the purpose of analysis is to predict travel behaviour or to predict and measure behavioural changes resulting from different urban patterns,” she writes, “then measures of individual access that incorporate complexity are warranted” (259). However, measurements can become too complex to be used, “when in reality simplified versions can be equally valid and useful” (260). The measure of access she proposes in this paper is “very straightforward”: “Access is defined as the ability to reach a given destination based on geographic distance,” so that “locations that have facilities close by are said to have better access than locations that have facilities far away” (260). This measurement appears to be about density: dense neighbourhoods will, according to this metric, be more walkable.

Talen suggests, though, that this view of access is “normative,” because it relies “on a specific judgment about what ought to occur” (260). In these “normative views of what the urban pattern ‘ought’ to be like, access based on geographic distance is vital,” she states (260). Distance-focused analyses, she contends, “might address the question of whether access to a particular good is discriminatory”: people who don’t drive—the elderly or the poor—may not find urban services to be accessible, “because distance is not elastic” (261). Despite the problems involved in quantifying distance, Talen argues that it’s still important to use numbers to compare whether one area of a city might have better access to goods and services than another (261). Thus, she suggests, it is “possible to legitimise the use of quantified measures in the evaluation of urban quality by emphasising flexibility in approach, exploration and visualisation of data, and continually bearing in mind the limitations involved in quantified approaches” (261).

Talen argues that five groups of factors affect “the measure of access” (261). “The first two are simply the spatial locations of points of origin and points of destination,” she writes. Usually points of origin refer to housing, while points of destination refer to schools or places of employment (261). Talen is clearly seeing walking as a mode of functional transportation rather than a leisure activity. “The third factor is the travel route and the distance between origin(s) and destination(s),” she continues. This factor involves distance and “the qualities of the route,” including topography, design speed, the number of lanes of traffic, and “mode,” which I think means the way people move through space—by walking, for example (262). The fourth factor “has to do with the attributes of the individuals who seek access,” including socioeconomic status, age, gender, and employment status. “Certain assumptions can be made about the attractiveness or relevance of travel to certain facilities (and the likely mode of travel) based on these characteristics,” she writes (262). Finally, “the amount, type and quality of a given destination,” particularly its attractiveness, creates another group of factors (262).

The most important kinds of data necessary are origins, destinations, and the routes between them (262). If those data are available, “the measurement of access can be easily accomplished,” simply by computing distances and determining “a measure of access for each origin that can appropriately be used as an urban quality indicator” (262). Talen describes GIS software that can be used to do this work (262). That software can calculate distance and, apparently, the number of “urban opportunities” that are within walking distance (263). I’m not sure how that works, but measuring “urban opportunities” is a way of measuring the density of texture and experience in a given urban environment: the more dense and textured the environment, the more pleasant it will be for pedestrians. If that’s Talen’s point, I would agree, because that’s been my experience of walking in urban areas.

Talen’s case study relies on three principles. First, cities “should be designed to accommodate a variety of transportation modes—walking, biking, private automobiles and public transit” (263). Second, pedestrian access “is a separate, vital dimension of urban quality” (263). Finally, access “should be evaluated for a variety of urban opportunities,” including schools and parks (263). “Since the distance to the nearest facility is the central, most meaningful element—the minimum distance between residential location and urban amenity—the ‘minimum-distance’ measurement approach is used” in her analysis (263). “Planners can accomplish this kind of evaluation by looking at just two aspects of access: the ability to reach urban places, and the quantity and attributes of places that can be reached,” she writes. “Together, these two aspects of access provide a powerful indicator of urban spatial pattern and its quality” (263).

Talen used data from Portland, Oregon’s regional planning organization (263-64). She suggests that “the walking distance parameter is usually defined as 1/4 mile”—that’s the maximum distance pedestrians will find walkable, it seems—although people will be willing to walk farther in some cases (264-66). She used GIS and “the visualisation of quantitative data” to make conclusions about “how access varies across the urban landscape” (266).

She begins by summarizing the number of “residential parcels”—lots? developments?—“that are within 1/4 mile of an elementary school or a neighbourhood park” (266). Not many “single-family parcels”—houses, then—or “multi-family parcels”—apartment buildings—are that close to either a park or a school in Portland. These results, Talen writes, “are significant since they verify that a large majority of residents in Portland are lacking pedestrian access to essential public facilities,” with only 10 percent of apartment buildings being within walking distance—defined as a 1/4 mile—of an elementary school (266-67).

Talen then introduces the socioeconomic characteristics of areas associated with more or less access to facilities (267). She uses the tax valuations of single-family properties as her metric of the residents’ socioeconomic characteristics. Surprisingly, she finds little difference between access to facilities for properties with higher or lower assessed values (272). I find that hard to believe, but that is the result she discovered.

“The fact that only 12% of the residential parcels in the city of Portland are within walking distance of either a neighbourhood park or an elementary school gives some indication that the oft-cited planning goal of increasing neighbourhood-level (i.e. pedestrian) access to parks and schools in not within easy reach,” Talen concludes. “Pedestrian access to parks and schools is generally regarded as an essential building block of quality urban environments,” yet her case study demonstrates that “even in a ‘Smart Growth’ city like Portland, walking to a school or park is restricted to relatively few selected areas and populations” (274-75). However, “the distribution of parks and schools in Portland tends to favour areas with lower housing values, higher percentages of minorities, higher levels of unoccupied housing, and similar characteristics of socioeconomic status, which can be interpreted as a positive phenomenon since these are likely to be the areas in greatest need of access to public amenities” (275). 

The reason that pedestrian access is so poor, Talen notes, is that American cities are designed for cars, not for pedestrians (275). She notes that large regional parks are not available to pedestrians, and acknowledges that “the relationship between access to schools and the location of children” is not accounted for in a direct way by her study (275). Despite those flaws, Talen suggests that her work is useful in understanding “the direction in which urban form ought to be going” (275). That “optimal form” tends to emphasize pedestrian access, such as Smart Growth, sustainable development, or New Urbanism: “The idea of concentrating rather than dispersing facilities, clustering housing and mixing land-use types, is essentially about increasing access, most importantly, pedestrian access” (275). A lack of access is something to be fixed, and urban planners “should seek to remove impediments that separate people form the amenities and services they require” (275). To do that, planners need to be able to evaluate, plan for, and promote accessibility (276). “The application of standards is just one way to evaluate pedestrian access,” she concludes. “How well a city performs in terms of walking access could also be evaluated over time . . . as well as by region” (276). She hopes that “some progress can be made in advancing urban quality by engaging in a more rigorous measurement of pedestrian access” (276).

I’m not sure what to make of Talen’s article. She seems to be convinced that she’s found a key quantitative metric for walkability in the 1/4 mile distance between houses and elementary schools or parks. But the Harbour Landing development in southwest Regina would likely score well on that metric—at least as far as parks are concerned—even though I’m not convinced that it’s a walkable place at all. That’s because it’s separated from the rest of the city by six lanes of fast traffic and crosswalks that give pedestrians little time to get from one side of that highway to the other. To claim that neighbourhood is walkable would be to suggest that people living there will only shop at the Wal-Mart that’s a quarter of a mile from their house, or that they will only visit the restaurants near that Wal-Mart. It ignores the vast deserts of pavement—parking lots—that separate stores and restaurants from each other in the neighbourhood’s retail developments. It also ignores the lack of crosswalks for pedestrians. Who wants to walk in such bleak surroundings, which are so unfriendly to pedestrians, even for short distances? What about the quality of the parks in that development, where there are few trees or other amenities (like benches)? On paper, Talen’s methodology might give Harbour Landing a high walkability score, but anyone condemned to walking there might have a very different response to the question of the area’s walkability. Planners might only be able to understand quantitative measurements, but perhaps qualitative measurements are just as important. Would it be too much to ask planners to spend time walking in neighbourhoods as part of their practice? Might that not yield important insights about walkability? If nothing else, an urban planner in this city (I’m assuming we have people who do that work) who has to run across Lewvan Drive because the crosswalk gives pedestrians little time to get across might lobby his or her colleagues in the traffic department to give pedestrians another 10 or 20 seconds before the red hand starts flashing. More importantly, for me, is the question of how such neighbourhoods contribute to or prevent the development of a culture of walking, a culture in which walking is not eccentric but is part of daily life. If it’s easier to drive everywhere in such neighbourhoods, and if driving appears to be safer than walking and more pleasant, then wouldn’t they be contributing to a culture of driving, rather than walking? And isn’t culture the key element, the thing that studies like Talen’s leave out?

Work Cited

Talen, Emily. “Pedestrian Access as a Measure of Urban Quality.” Planning Practice and Research, vol. 17, no. 3, 2002, pp. 257-78. DOI:10.1080/026974502200005634.