'Walking … Just Walking': How Children And
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Social & Cultural Geography ISSN: 1464-9365 (Print) 1470-1197 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20 ‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter John Horton, Pia Christensen, Peter Kraftl & Sophie Hadfield-Hill To cite this article: John Horton, Pia Christensen, Peter Kraftl & Sophie Hadfield-Hill (2014) ‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter, Social & Cultural Geography, 15:1, 94-115, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2013.864782 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.864782 © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis Published online: 02 Dec 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 844 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 22 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rscg20 Download by: [94.8.43.212] Date: 17 October 2016, At: 10:17 Social &Cultural Geography,2014 Vol. 15, No. 1, 94–115, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2013.864782 ‘Walking ... just walking’: how children and young people’severyday pedestrian practices matter John Horton1 ,Pia Christensen2 ,Peter Kraftl3 &Sophie Hadfield-Hill 4 1 Centre for Children andYouth,The University of Northampton, Park Campus, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, NN2 7AL, United Kingdom, [email protected]; 2 School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT,United Kingdom, [email protected]; 3 Department of Geography, University of Leicester,Leicester Road, Leicester,LE1 7RH,United Kingdom, [email protected] and 4 Centre for Children and Youth, The University of Northampton, Park Campus, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, NN27AL, United Kingdom, sophie. hadfi[email protected] This paper considers the importance of walking for many children and young people’s everyday lives, experiences and friendships. Drawing upon research with 175 9- to 16-year- olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, we highlight key characteristics of (daily,taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) walking practices, which were of constitutive importance in children and young people’sfriendships, communities and geographies. These practices were characteristically bounded, yet intense and circuitous. They were vivid, vital, loved, playful, social experiences yet also dismissed, with ashrug, as ‘just walking’. We argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require critical reflection upon chief social scientific theorisations of walking, particularly the large body of literature on children’sindependent mobility and the rich, multi-disciplinary line of work known as ‘new walking studies’. In arguing that these lines of work could be productively interrelated, we propound ‘just walking’—particularly the often-unremarked way it matters—as akind of phenomenon which is sometimes done a disservice by chief lines of theory and practice in social and cultural geography. Key words: children’sgeographies, walking, mobility,children’sindependent mobility, new walking studies, children and young people Preface Introduction An interview with a10-year-old living in anew In this paperweconsiderthe importance of urban development in south-east England. ‘walking ... just walking’ formanychildren andyoung people’s everyday lives. We will Interviewer: Okay,and what did you play ...? show how, in ourresearchwith175 9- to Simon 1 :Weplayedwalking ... justwalking 16-year-oldslivinginnew urbandevelopments around. in south-east England, some particular © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Children and young people’severyday pedestrian practices 95 (daily,taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) our work within the multi-disciplinary con- formsofwalking were centraltothe lives, ceptualisations and practicesofnew walking experiencesand friendshipsofmostchildren studies. In both cases,weown up to akind of andyoung people.The main body of thepaper ambivalence; asense that each body of work highlightskey characteristicsofthese walking has been valuable in providing avocabulary practices, andtheir constitutive role in these and imperative for studying walking, but also children andyoung people’s social andcultural afeeling that each seemssomehow ill-suited to geography.Overthe course of thepaper we will studying thekinds of everyday walking arguethat‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after practices—just walking—thatare fore- Middleton2010, 2011)likethese requireusto grounded in this paper.Inboth cases, too, we thinkcriticallyabout twobodiesofgeographi- suggestthat our ambivalence might prompt caland social scientificresearch. On onehand, some broader challengesfor social and we will arguethatthe largebodyofresearchon cultural geographers. children’s spatialrange andindependent mobi- lity couldbeconceptually enlivened and extended to acknowledgebodily, social,socio- Children’sindependent mobilityand technicaland habitual practices. On theother spatial range hand,wewillsuggest that theempirical details of such practicesshouldpromptcriticalreflec- Themostextensive andimmediately salient tion uponthe wonderfullyrich, multi-disciplin- body of research relating to children andyoung aryvein of conceptualisationlatterly termed people’s walkingpractices is social scientific ‘new walkingstudies’ (Lorimer 2011). Indeed, work on children’s independentmobilityand in conclusion we shallargue that thetheoretical spatialrange (see Hillman, Adamsand White- vivacity of walkingstudies,and theconcernsof legg 1990). Over thelastthree decadesmany more appliedempirical approaches,suchas social scientists have investigated this topic, work on children’s independentmobility,could oftenwithafocusonurban neighbourhood productively be interrelated.Insodoing we mobilities,and oftenapplyingmethods and open outawiderchallenge to social andcultural concepts from environmentalpsychologyor geographers,toexpeditethiskindofinter- transportgeography (Mackett et al.2007; relation in otherresearchcontexts. Matthews 1992).Thisconceptual-methodo- logicalframe hasaffordedresearchexploring children andyoung people’s walkingindiverse Twoapproaches to pedestrian practices (thoughtypically minority world) contexts (Carver, Watson,Shawand Hillman2013; In this section, we position our concern with Fyhrietal. 2011; Pacilli,Giovannelli, Prezza children and young people’s‘just walking’in andAugimeri2013).Thisbodyofworkhas relationtotwo bodies of work which have been importantincalling forresearchon framed many geographical and social scientific children andyoung people’s walkingroutines, encounters with everyday pedestrian practices. behaviours andboundaries. Apartfromdevel- First,wereflect upon thelarge bodyof opingwidelyusedterminologies,techniques geographical work dealing with children and andtechnologiesfor mappingand evaluating youngpeople’sneighbourhood spatial range everyday mobilities (Badland,Oliver, Duncan and independent mobilities. Second, we locate andSchantz 2011),researchers in this area have 96 JohnHorton et al. made importantwider contributionstounder- simplistic notions of space, and of journeying standingsofchildrenand youngpeople’s from place-to-place. Many critics have noted geographies; forexample by evidencing gen- how longstanding research methods dealing deredand class-basedinequalitiesinspatial with transport practicestend to represent range(Brownetal. 2008;Matthews1987), spaces as containers for action,and under- consequences of shifting social-historicalnorms stand mobility as afairly bare processof (e.g.automobility, family practicesor‘stranger ‘getting from A-to-B’ (Cresswell 2010; Spin- danger’) forindependent mobilities (Karsten ney 2009). We agree with Barker (2009) and 2005;Mattson 2002;McDonald2008),health Barker,Kraftl, Horton and Tucker (2009) that implications of limitedindependent mobilities this critique certainlypertains to many classic (Villanuevaetal. 2012)orimpacts of policy studies of children’sindependent mobility and andurban planning interventions(O’Brien, family transport practices. Barker’s(2008, Jones, Sloanand Ristin 2000;Villanuevaetal. 2011) work has been important and distinc- forthcoming).Thisworkwas instrumental in tive in revealingthe complex social, familial, shapingthe concerns of subsequent geographi- bodily,affective and sociotechnical processes calworkwithchildrenand youngpeople; as is which constitute, and matter to, family car evident, forinstance, in thewell-established journeys. We agree with Mitchell, Kearns and line of research on young people’soften Collins (2007) and Ross (2007) that children transgressivemobilities in urbanpublicspaces and youngpeople’s pedestrian mobilities could (see Matthews,Taylor, Percy-Smithand Limb be productivelyexplored in asimilar way,but 2000;Valentine 1996). we worrythat calls for conceptual experimen- However,wealso write from several related tation in this research context have typically anxietieswith the treatment of walking within gone unheeded. As in Schwanen, Banister and this context.First, we note that many studies Anable’s(2012)critiques of transport scholar- within this contextostensibly deal with ship, we suggestthat the apparent