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Introduction: historical perspectives on pedestrians and the city

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2019

Colin Pooley Open the ORCID record for Colin Pooley [Opens in a new window] ,
Martin Emanuel ,
Tiina Männistö-Funk Open the ORCID record for Tiina Männistö-Funk [Opens in a new window]  and
Peter Norton Open the ORCID record for Peter Norton [Opens in a new window]
Colin Pooley*
Affiliation:
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YQ, UK
Martin Emanuel
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Tiina Männistö-Funk
Affiliation:
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Department of Finnish History, University of Turku, Finland
Peter Norton
Affiliation:
Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia, PO Box 400744, CharlottesvilleVA22904, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Walking is a neglected topic in the history of transport and mobility in cities. The four articles in this special section demonstrate the importance of travel on foot in nineteenth- and twentieth-century cities in four different countries, and reveal the ways in which pedestrian mobility has persisted despite the development of a car-dominated society. Together they provide important new evidence on a neglected topic and hopefully pave the way for further research on this theme.

Type
Introduction
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 204 - 210
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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References

1 See for example Dyos, H.J., and Aldcroft, D., British Transport: An Economic Survey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth (Leicester, 1969)Google Scholar; Jackson, A., Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport, 1900–39 (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

2 Norton, P., Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (Boston, MA, 2011)Google Scholar; Mom, G., Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence and Persistence of the Car, 1895–1940 (New York, 2014)Google Scholar.

3 Horton, D., Rosen, P. and Cox, P. (eds.), Cycling and Society (Farnham, 2007)Google Scholar; Oldenziel, R. and de la Bruhèze, A.A., ‘Contested spaces: bicycle lanes in urban Europe, 1900–1995’, Transfers, 1 (2011), 29–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emanuel, M., ‘Constructing the cyclist: ideology and representations in urban traffic planning in Stockholm, 1930–70’, Journal of Transport History, 33 (2011), 67–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oldenziel, R., Emanuel, M., de la Bruheze, A.A. and Veraart, F., Cycling Cities: The European Experience: Hundred Years of Policy and Practice (Eindhoven, 2016)Google Scholar.

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5 For further discussion of this theme, see Pooley, C. with Jones, T., Tight, M., Horton, D., Scheldeman, G., Mullen, C., Jopson, A. and Strano, E., Promoting Walking and Cycling: New Perspectives on Sustainable Travel (Bristol, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pooley, C., Horton, D., Scheldeman, G., Mullen, C., Jones, T. and Tight, M., ‘“You feel unusual walking”: the invisible presence of walking in English cities’, Journal of Transport and Health, 1 (2014), 260–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Articles with a specific focus on walking also appear rarely in Urban History. Notable exceptions are Andersson, P., ‘“Bustling, crowding, and pushing”: pickpockets and the nineteenth-century street crowd’, Urban History, 41 (2014), 291–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Law, M., ‘Speed and blood on the bypass: the new automobilities of inter-war London’, Urban History, 39 (2012), 490–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, P., ‘Parading in public: patrician women and sumptuary law in Renaissance Siena’, Urban History, 37 (2010), 452–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For instance Lorimer, H. and Lund, K., ‘Performing facts: finding a way over Scotland's mountains’, Sociological Review, 51 (2003), 130–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lund, K., ‘Seeing in motion and the touching eye: walking over Scotland's mountains’, Etnofoor, 18 (2005), 27–42Google Scholar.

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11 Law, R., ‘Beyond “women and transport”: towards new geographies of gender and daily mobility’, Progress in Human Geography, 23 (1999), 567–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmucki, B., ‘“If I walked on my own at night I stuck to well-lit areas.” Gendered spaces and urban transport in 20th century Britain’, Research in Transportation Economics, 34 (2012), 74–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Though this is beginning to change in the context of debates about ‘liveable cities’. See for example: http://liveablecities.org.uk/.

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14 For discussions of some of these issues, see for instance Whitelegg, J. and Williams, N., ‘Non-motorised transport and sustainable development: evidence from Calcutta’, Local Environment, 5 (2000), 7–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porter, G., ‘Living in a walking world: rural mobility and social equity issues in sub-Saharan Africa’, World Development, 30 (2002), 285–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Land Transport Authority, ‘Passenger transport mode shares in world cities’, Journeys, 12 (2014), 54–64Google Scholar; Pooley et al., Promoting Walking and Cycling, 17–50; Försti, T., ‘Gendering the automobile: men, women and the car in Helsinki, 1900–1930’, in The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience (London, 2017)Google Scholar.

15 Shergold, J. and Parkhurst, G., ‘Transport-related social exclusion amongst older people in rural southwest England and Wales’, Journal of Rural Studies, 28 (2012), 412–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ahern, A. and Hine, J., ‘Rural transport – valuing the mobility of older people’, Research in Transportation Economics, 34 (2012), 27–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17 Pooley, C., ‘Cities, spaces and movement: everyday experiences of urban travel in England c. 1840–1940’, Urban History, 44 (2017), 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pooley, C., ‘Travelling through the city: using life writing to explore individual experiences of urban travel c. 1840–1940’, Mobilities, 12 (2017), 598–609CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 A selection of essays arising from this network will be published as Emanuel, M., Schipper, F. and Oldenziel, R. (eds.), Sustainable Urban Mobility: Histories of Today's Challenge (New York, forthcoming, 2020)Google Scholar.

19 See also Divall, C., ‘Transport history, the usable past and the future of mobility’, in Grieco, M. and Urry, J. (eds.), Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society (Farnham, 2011), 305–19Google Scholar; Divall, C., Hine, J. and Pooley, C. (eds.), Transport Policy: Learning Lessons from History (Farnham, 2016)Google Scholar.