1 Introduction

Renters make comparable changes in an apartment they furnish with their acts and memories; … as do pedestrians, in the streets they fill with the forests of their desires and goals (de Certeau 1984, p. xxi).

… at moments like this, the city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or worse, it invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into the shape you can live in. You, too. Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you. Decide what it is, and your own identity will be revealed… (Raban 1974, p. 3).

The aim of this chapter is to analyse walking as an everyday practice, which might have potential to improve the quality of life of urban dwellers. In scholarly literature, walking is often loaded with great expectations as regards its potential to enhance liveability and quality of life in cities (see e.g. Forsyth et al. 2009; Middleton 2010; Pinder 2011). However, my view is that we still need more tangible, fine-grained and concrete understanding of the premises for these promising claims. Do the promised benefits of walking originate in systems of planning and governance, or in more or less theoretical and romantic ideals of urbanism, which have little to do with the realities of everyday urban life? Like Middleton (2010), I try to situate, unpack and understand the practice of walking in the day-to-day experiences of urban pedestrians in a context where ‘much policy discussion assumes all walking to be the same and largely a self-evident means of transport, whilst many academic engagements with walking are highly abstract theorizations that lack any systematic empirical exploration of actual pedestrian practices’ (Middleton 2010, p. 575). I am assessing the promises of walking in a local, specific context and from the viewpoint of the everyday life world. I will concentrate on the positive experiences, or ‘quality of life’, which mundane walking provides for the (sub)urban dweller, in order to start to unpack ‘the black box’, where liveability and walking are mixed together in a taken-for-granted alliance.

I approach the walkability of an environment from the viewpoint of an active perceiver. This research approach, focusing on the agency of a walker, has gradually gained a foothold in mobility studies, and there is now a vast body of literature on walking as a practice of everyday life, its experiences and implications for city life (e.g. Ingold and Vergunst 2008; Middleton 2010; Pinder 2011). Walking is often discussed as an embodied and multisensuous practice of learning about spaces, discovering and transforming the city, mutual constitution of bodies and landscapes or constructing meanings in human-environment relationships (Middleton 2010; Pinder 2011). The experiences of walking are constructed in concrete, mutual interrelationships between the pedestrian and the environment in the context of everyday (Macnaghten and Urry 1998; Ingold 2000).

I will contribute to this discussion by bringing the element of time to the analysis. I will consider the experiences of walking in their (spatio-)temporal context and look more closely at the dynamics of walking and time. Walking also produces its very own temporalities and characteristics of time (Szerszynski 2002). Watts and Urry (2008) show that there are multiple travel times filled with activities and meanings which are very context specific. They see the value of travel time in its liminality, its status as a place in-between, which creates socio-material specificity and creates a sense of ambiguity and possibilities that are markedly different from other (immobile) places. To quote Watts and Urry (2008), passengers ‘weave their temporality, landscape, and expertise of train travel – their “trainscape” so to speak. Thus, it seems that travel time is made in travel-time use. There are many travel times’ (Watts and Urry 2008, p. 868). The same goes for walking: there are multiple walking times, which are also actively produced, and there are diverse walkscapes in the same physical environments. It is those temporalities of walking and their embedded, actively constructed possibilities that I will trace in this chapter. Walking in everyday life is not the passive consumption of possibilities created by urban and transport planners (cf. de Certeau 1984). We use and manage time tactically for our own purposes, to open possibilities for different activities and experiences. The idea of tactic here draws on De Certeau (1984), who famously distinguishes between the strategies of the powerful that construct places and the tactics of ordinary people that fleetingly appropriate, use and rework spaces (Pinder 2011).

I am taking into consideration the multiple temporalities of human life and experience (see e.g. Szerszynski 2002), aware that present experiences incorporate both past (memories) and future (expectations) and, at the same time, memories and expectations are only interpreted in the context of the here-and-now (Karjalainen 2004). We not only manage our present time, we also orient our present actions with the intention of influencing the future (Szerszynski 2002). To understand here-and-now experiences of walking, they have to be contextualized in this longer time horizon. On the other hand, to understand the promises of walking – the future-oriented dimension of it that creates possibilities (whether on the level of individual life stories or community futures), one place to start are present experiences, where the temporalities of walking interact and commingle with each other.

The analysis draws upon interview data with inhabitants in two Finnish cities. I explore the short-term and the long-term time horizons of walking experiences by asking: How do the qualities of immediate spatial and temporal experience merge into the everyday life of inhabitants? Do the daily walking habits of urban dwellers have a role in how they believe they can shape their quality of life in the future, and if so, how does this potential of shaping the future shape immediate experiences of walking?

2 Methods

The research material analysed for the chapter consists of 14 interviews (one interview was made with a couple) conducted in two Finnish cities, Helsinki (550,000 residents) and Hämeenlinna (67,000 residents), in 2008 and in 2010. The material includes interview data from two different case studies, which both deal with the experiences and practices of walking in the everyday life of inhabitants, but with slightly different emphasis. In Helsinki the research area included the suburban neighbourhoods Herttoniemi and Roihuvuori (about 23,000 residents in total).Footnote 1 The distance from the city centre is about 7 km and the area is well connected to the public transport network. In Hämeenlinna the smaller neighbourhoods of Kauriala and Hirsimäki were studied. Kauriala is situated in walking distance from the town centre and Hirsimäki about 5 km from the centre. All areas except Hirsimäki have good local services. Five of the research participants lived in Herttoniemi, three in Roihuvuori, four in Hirsimäki and three in Kauriala.

The walking-interview method (e.g. Jokinen et al. 2010) was used in data gathering. The method is based on semi-structured interviews with inhabitants who guide the interviewer as they walk their daily routes together. The participants were of different ages. Three of them were under 30 years old, five were between 30 and retirement age and seven were retired. Most of the interviewees did not work regularly and only two had children living at home. Four of the interviewees, all from the Hirsimäki neighbourhood, had easy access to a car. Walking was an important mode of getting around among the interviewees and recreational and leisure types of walking were emphasized. In addition we accompanied one excursion of a ‘walking club’, a self-organized group of elderly people in Herttoniemi. Three of the interviewees participated in the walking club regularly.

I analysed the interview data using qualitative content analysis, particularly applying Szerszynski’s (2002) idea that all forms of human action produce their own characteristic kinds of time, and using the concepts he introduces for understanding these temporalities. In addition, elements of narrative analysis have been made use of.

3 ‘Putting One’s Own Beat in Space’: Temporalities of Walking and Tactical Uses of Time

Edensor (2010, p. 15).

The interviews illustrated the multiplicity and diversity of experienced, qualitative times of walking. They included experiences of sociability and face-to-face interaction and of more anonymous sociality but also experiences of solitude and time reserved for oneself and one’s own thoughts only. This draws out how the temporal context for the practices of walking is created by collective rhythms but also how, at the same time, pedestrians create their own, individual temporalities. We use and manage our walking time to open up possibilities for various experiences.

Interviewees used the tactic of synchronizingFootnote 2 their time and activities with the collective rhythms of the city. Collective rhythms can be understood as a periodic synchronization of the activities of different people (Szerszynski 2002), the simultaneous participation of many of people in timetabled routines (Edensor 2010). When we synchronize our routines with others, we also mark and perform our relationship to larger collectives (Szerszynski 2002) and so produce collectively shared places (Edensor 2010). According to Kärrholm, ‘[t]he urban landscape is a place of heterogeneous temporalities and rhythms set by clock time, working hours, seasons, timetables, bodily functions, etc.’ (Kärrholm 2009, p. 423).

Negotiating shared space in terms of what kinds of encounters are seen as favourable or to be avoided can be done by managing time. For example, the retired interviewees had the possibility to avoid peak times related to work hours for doing their daily shopping or for using the most popular recreational paths. Also, interviewees who made more trips bound for certain destinations and tied to specific schedules used the tactics of avoiding ‘crowds’ or of otherwise appropriating space and time for themselves. A middle-aged woman living in Herttoniemi describes her tactics of walking:

I find it an enormous benefit that I don’t need to start my day by getting on the bus, which is crowded with stressed out and more or less unhappy people … I also have the opportunity to choose the time I walk and exercise, when there are not so many other people around. On Sundays at noon this path is crowded like Itäväylä [motorway nearby]. And they flail around with their walking sticks (Woman, about 50 years).

The interviewee relates her walking practices to the segmentation of time in daily life. Segmentation means marking and dividing time into periods which have particular qualities or characteristics (Szerszynski 2002). She manipulates time segmentation, which differentiates between the time of obligations, such as working time, and leisure time of behaviour that is not instrumentally rational (see Szerszynski 2002). For her, her regular walking practices challenge this segmentation, making it fuzzy and thus her time looser. Her walking time can be a time of duties and a personal time of leisure at the same time. When walking, she feels like she has no need to perform a role related to these specified segments of everyday life. Walking time, for her, is neither family time, caring time, time with her partner nor work time, but rather time of her own.

Although I might be on my way to take care of some duties, I’m trying to enjoy the journey and that’s why I choose particular routes. Because they support this aim. But I can also meditate on Abraham Wetter’s street [a busy street in Herttoniemi] in the middle of traffic. I’m trying to live slowly and to attain a state of presence … it is my personal project, and contrary to the spirit of our age (Woman, about 50 years, Herttoniemi).

As Rebecca Solnit writes, ‘… thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals’ (Solnit 2000, p. 5).

Spaces of doing are functional, designed for some particular action and often regulated by some authority. Spaces of being, on the other hand, imply environments that embody idleness and the appropriation of space (Thomson and Philo 2004 cited in Kuusisto-Arponen and Tani 2009; cf. ‘modes of doing and being’ Horelli 2010). Spaces of being are supported by permitting multiple and alternative uses of space. This is how tight spaces turn into loose space (Franck and Stevens 2007; Kuusisto-Arponen and Tani 2009). Walking can challenge the division between being and doing. It can provide loose time and a space of being, not restricted to particular points in the physical environment. One of the interviewees, a 15-year-old boy, walks a lot around Herttoniemi, just hanging about with his friends. For him, walking affords a space and time of privacy or at least free from the control of parents.

If we are at someone’s home, the parents are [listening] there just behind the door. We want to have privacy and in addition it’s nice to do something, not just sit still. Not that we have any secrets, but it is the privacy walking gives (Boy, 15 years, Herttoniemi).

The practice of interviewees hanging about walking is strongly contextualized by multiple temporalities – seasonal rhythms and varying environmental conditions, rhythms of work, school and holiday seasons. This boy accommodates his walks and routes to these, but at the same time he also uses those rhythms tactically. In summer, he and his friends walk to the seaside because ‘it is kind of beautiful there… and it isn’t so damned hot there’, or they tend to stop and camp out on the beach or on the rocks, whereas in winter they choose routes further inland to avoid the cold wind. A long summer vacation offers the possibility to spend time at home indoors without disturbance from parents who work during the day. In winter, walking is a way to keep themselves warm and ‘escape’ the control of parents who are at home after the school day. Another interviewee describes how she often goes for a walk with her friends to appropriate time-space for their conversations:

Perhaps for women it [walking] is also a matter of having private conversations…we talk about everything and about personal issues while walking. If the other person has family at home, we can go for a walk and ponder things just the two of us. Not all things are meant for the ears of all family members (Woman, about 55 years, Hirsimäki).

The tactics of walking are not only designed to create privacy or produce experiences of solitude. Sociability and seeking social contacts, also relatively anonymous in nature, played an important role in the walks of the interviewees. In a multirhythmic environment, certain encounters may become frequent and stabilize through synchronization and regularity. Synchronization produces shape and rhythmic regularity to occasional encounters, when people following the same rhythms meet on their walks. This kind of synchrony can also be intentionally created by individuals. An interviewee in Herttoniemi describes it like this:

Yes, I often run into one particular person. And then she/he always says that “you are an early bird this morning!” and I answer “So are you”. But if I go for a walk in the morning I seldom meet anyone. I am more likely to bump into people if I time my shopping for the afternoon (Woman, about 70 years Herttoniemi).

For another aged interviewee, accidental social encounters had developed into acquaintances, developed over time as she had regularly been walking the same routes to the older people’s day centre and to local services. The anonymity of these encounters can start to crack through repetition. This is an important factor in why she finds her neighbourhood a good place to live.

You can run into many people here … it wasn’t always easy, but I have made friends since moving here…. Maybe I was ready for that myself too… I began to feel at home here and I believe I’d miss everything if I had to move away. It’s lovely, that you can stop and start a chat, or at least say hello and ask how life is and wish a good day (Woman, about 75 years, Roihuvuori).

An older couple describes their encounters like this:

It depends a little… if we go for a walk before noon, we seldom meet any-one. The same passers-by. We have begun to say hello to some people we encounter regularly (Couple, about 70 years, Herttoniemi).

Gardner (2011) has studied older people’s experiences of public space. Her results highlight the significance of third places (originally Oldenburg 1989), sites of informal public life, which are located outside of the home and of work, for the experiences of well-being of older residents of a neighbourhood. Significant places of social contacts and neighbourhood networks also included ‘thresholds’ – semipublic spaces near home – and ‘transitory zones’ – the sidewalks close to home, the subway platform, seats on buses and the line at the grocery store. Gardner observed how participants intentionally occupied these places and used them as places to connect with people, even for a just a moment (Gardner 2011).

Of course this intention to occupy certain places and connect with others is not limited to older people. One interviewee who was about 20 years old describes the young people’s habit of hanging about in Herttoniemi. They know the rhythms of this collective activity and know how to bump up into each other without making appointments. They use synchronization to produce encounters, which are accidental and purposeful at the same time.

All the best places to hang about were here [in older parts of Herttoniemi] … young people want to hang about in a places where they might possibly meet each other, but without calling each other… they just got together… When I was young, the usual place to go was the railway station [in the city centre], but we didn’t need to go there because we had our own, much nicer, places here (Boy, 20 years, Herttoniemi).

Encounters can be intentionally managed, but based on the interviews, it can be said that a good part of the joy of the encounters that walking generates is their variety and their fleeting and unexpected nature. This came up particularly when participants spoke about the experiences that the constantly changing, mundane environment offers to the senses. People pay attention to changing vegetation, the colours of the leaves in the trees and whether there are flowers, berries or mushrooms in the usual places. They sometimes planned their routes specifically in order to check these changes in the environment. This draws attention to the way the variation in the environment, especially the cyclical change of the seasons, also keeps us moving: usually we do not have much choice over the routes we use when we leave home, so changes in these familiar environments may be an added source of motivation for walking, whereas otherwise the routes would be routinized.

I always find something new and exciting there. … I love surprises. I just go out of the door and then decide on a route … and I can find tadpoles or something … It’s the joy of discoveries … once I found a wild honey-suckle by noticing the scent first (Woman, about 75 years, Roihuvuori).

I enjoy seeing [the forest] in the different seasons because … this walk is always the same anyway, and it sure can be boring since it’s always the same. … I’m searching for something all the time, … there’s always something new find here. [Passing the small boat harbour] those dead-looking boats on the waterfront … in summer I often stop here; if the wind is blowing, it’s nice to listen to their masts. … Now I don’t know what we’ll find (Woman, about 50 years, Roihuvuori).

4 Stemming from the Past, Oriented Towards the Future: Walking as Part of Biography

The temporal context in which walking becomes meaningful is not restricted to the multiple rhythms of the city – the immediate experiences described in the previous section – but also encompasses the longer time horizon inherent in a person’s own daily life. Past experiences shape the meanings we give to our encounters with the social and material environment in the here and now, so that experiences of walking are constructed and given meaning in relation to one’s life span. How the sociability of walking is experienced depends on the stage of life and the current situation – Is a person looking for time of one’s own and solitude, for shared experiences with acquaintances or for anonymous social encounters?

I live alone and spend a lot of time by myself, so sometimes I don’t mind a bit of hustle and bustle around me at all (Woman, Kauriala, 70).

It is a little hard to get myself to go for a walk alone. I sit by myself at my desk all the day … If the radio isn’t on, it’s totally silent there [in Hirsimäki]. I have as much peace and quiet as I want (Woman, about 55 years, Hirsimäki).

I won’t say it’s inconvenient, but when I’m choosing the routes where I walk, I don’t care about [social contact]. I get my share of social contact during the day… so I prefer to be alone with my own thoughts and to laugh at my dogs fooling around (Man about 45 years, Hirsimäki).

Within the narrative mode of understanding, individual events can only fully be understood according to how they are placed in the overarching plot (Szerszynski 2002, p. 186). The events and descriptions in the interviews were often contextualized in biographical stories or narratives about settling in the area, and in the evolution of daily practices and travel habits. According to Franzosi (1998), the story in general is a ‘chronological succession of events’. In a narrative, events must also be bound together by some principles of logical coherence and they must disrupt an initial state of equilibrium (Franzosi 1998). Either the events that stories describe have already occurred or a teller predicts or wants them to occur in the future (Kaplan 1986). Stories function at different timescales, such as micro-narratives, which structure everyday life and biographical narratives, which give shape to a personal life (Szerszynski 2002). When, for instance, experiences of enjoyable solitude are situated in a story about belonging and social ties, they become framed as exceptions, which only serve to highlight the bigger narrative of belonging. If they were told as part of a phase of life (or life story) about weak social ties, they would gain quite another meaning. Any efforts that are made to escape social roles and ties, or by contrast, attempts to attach and create ties, are strongly related to the specific life situation. In this way the temporalities of walking can stretch from the temporal scale of daily routines and tactics to that of biographical life stories.

Interviewees often recounted their walking (or mobility) history as a story of continuity, that is, durability from past to present. They characterized themselves as natural pedestrians with an inborn urge to walk, but often their story also revealed how they had come to be walkers. For instance, moving around on foot had been a necessity, not an option, in their childhood, but in the course of life, it had become a habit and so also a virtue.

I’ll walk as long as my feet are still working. I have always walked. First we didn’t have many options, later we did, but I just felt that I have to walk. I have always been such an outdoor person. I feel nervous if I can’t get out for a walk. … When I have taken a walk I feel peaceful, better (Woman, about 70, Herttoniemi).

Participants also anticipated continuity in the future and did what they could to ensure that they would be able to walk in the future. The elderly interviewees showed active initiative and a willingness to continue the practice of walking in older age. In Herttoniemi, some people had even created a routine that provided social support for walking and getting outdoors. This self-organized ‘walking club’ brings together older people for weekly walks, which helps them maintain their habit of regular walking, since other people’s company creates an added feeling of safety. The members gained satisfaction from going for safe, social walks, and they also experienced their gatherings as meaningful because they enabled less physically fit members to get outdoors without feeling overly vulnerable.

We had another club too. The idea was for it to be open for all kinds of activities and issues to talk about. But this didn’t stay active very long, it ended because people just wanted to go walking (Couple, about 70, Herttoniemi).

Walking can be future oriented in the sense that it aims to preserve physical mobility and explicitly to set up a healthy and mobile future for oneself. Thus, even pushing oneself a little is often seen as worthwhile.

If I go for a lunch at the sheltered home, I know I ought to leave home well in advance, so that I’d have time to take a walk before going there. I should try something new to get myself into the rhythm of walking… I should push myself a little (Woman, about 75, Herttoniemi).

The possibilities of future mobility and the need to adjust or prepare for changes to come were issues that became part of conscious considerations in narratives about transitional turns of life. Significant moments, which had somehow changed the direction of interviewees’ mobility routines, included moving house, starting a family, the illness or death of family members, divorce (one’s own or one’s parents), medical operations, friendships and neighbourliness, acquiring and having to give up pets, new jobs and so on. Interviewees had considered future possibilities for walking when they had chosen where to live. Walking related to wishes people had before moving to their current home and it figured in adjusting everyday routines to different settings. Experiences of walking were part of stories about putting down roots – making a home in a specific place, becoming attached to it. A retired interviewee explains that she decided recently to move to Roihuvuori because she was still fit and well enough to get to know the place on foot:

I don’t have a family and of course I’m motivated to become attached to this place, to find my own places and to create bonds. I’m quite fit and healthy now, I’m sixty-five and I’m able to walk. So I can still learn the routes and… It’s my goal that I should get out of the house when I’m old as well. Now there is still some flexibility… I don’t want to end up living in-side these four walls, as if that were my whole world … First it felt difficult even to get used to the local shop here. But now I like to go there. Actually the point at which this place started to be nice to my mind, was when the saleswoman said hello to me on the bus. That’s when I thought, yes, I can put down roots here (Woman, 65 years, Roihuvuori).

This section has argued that actively moving around in the environment is a promise about a future where one belongs and is attached to one’s living environment. The motivation to continue walking in old age relates to a connection with the social and natural environment – a sense of dwelling, which walking supports. On the other hand, the sense of dwelling constructs the meaningful and supportive frame for the practice of walking. The concept of dwelling highlights the fact that the dweller can orientate herself/himself in an environment, identify with it and experience that environment as meaningful. Dwelling is associated with concrete place (Norberg-Schulz 1980), being a process of continuous attentive engagement with the environment, where the world is progressively revealed and the environment becomes known, familiar and meaningful (Ingold 2000).

For Peace et al. (2005, 2006), as cited in Gardner (2011), for the aged, going outside to interact with the material and social neighbourhood is essential to their well-being and self-identity. It offers important engagements, which make reflecting on the self and the diversity of urban life possible. In my interview data there are stories about walking habits, which aim to preserve this kind of capability in the future, but also stories about how the practices of dwelling are formed in childhood and youth. A 20-year-old boy, who has grown up in Herttoniemi, describes how he has become familiar with and gradually expanded his knowledge of the environment in everyday activities, which are largely about moving around on foot – playing, adventuring and hanging about. In the interview he constructed a story of attachment to place, a nostalgic description of the very speciality of the place and the strong influence it has on his life.

5 The Streets That Kill the Forests of Their Desires and Goals

Cf. de Certeau (1984, p. xxi).

The previous sections have illustrated the great variety of spatial and temporal experiences of walking. Inhabitants actively use time to create those experiences and, on the other hand, manage walking habits to construct certain qualities of time in everyday life. This is how the immediate experiences of walking merge into the diversity of urban everyday life. In addition, interviewees saw walking as having a role in shaping their quality of life in the future. Walking can be a practice of dwelling, creating ties to the social and natural environment. This perceived potential of walking makes it meaningful in the present and significant to constructing a future.

However, to avoid too naïve a celebration of the manipulating and transforming potentials of the tactics of walking, certain observations still need to be highlighted. In this section I will consider how socio-material conditions can work against individual agency. To modify de Certeau’s poetic expression – sometimes the forests of desires and goals have too little soil – they are killed by the streets and so the promises of walking remain unfilled. It depends on the characteristics of the place and of the pedestrian, whether the pleasurable experiences of walking develop or not. Pedestrians have capabilities to manage and affect those experiences, but only within the possibilities created by the environment. There can be strong structural factors, social as well as material in nature, which dominate the spatial context and foil the efforts of the individual to manage her/his time and experience. Furthermore, the encounters with the socio-natural environment are not necessarily enjoyable. In some places, the interviewees wanted only to get through the environment, not to stop, look or listen to it. A 15-year-old boy describes his regular route through the industrial area:

But I have to say that it looks terrible here … The surroundings are ugly, the smell is bad and it’s noisy. At night there are fewer cars, fortunately. When I’m walking here with my friend we can’t talk because the cars are passing us constantly and we’re just trying to get through this as quickly as possible (Boy 15 years, Herttoniemi).

Older interviewees also confronted difficulties in adjusting their rhythms and their walking pace to the rhythms of the environment – for instance, crossing the street to the rhythm of traffic lights.

Additionally, our future everyday life is not simply ours to control, and agency over it is not equally distributed across society. That is to say, the qualities of the environment, which often contribute to the quality of life, such as walkability, are not equally distributed. Furthermore, the possibilities to make use of existing opportunities vary between individuals according to their heterogeneous abilities and resources (Lewis 2011). Liveability and walkability are always and only defined in relation to human agency, the real and actual ability to make use of opportunity (Lewis 2011). However much one walks, it is not guaranteed that one’s life gets any better. A middle-aged interviewee in Hämeenlinna identifies herself as an experienced, satisfied and even enthusiastic pedestrian and cyclist, but the promises of city life and belonging and getting attached to place seem to remain unfulfilled for her. This experience of an, at least partly, unfulfilled promise also influences her perception of her future life. The city seems to her to have an agency, which resists her efforts to create social ties.

Sometimes there just are no people to come across here [on the pedestrian street in the town centre]. I like having people around me. That’s the reason I moved to the city. … I like encountering different kinds of people and I like it even more if they talk… it’s cool. But social life is not very active when you come here as an outsider … I’m just hoping that this town will turn out to be a little friendlier to me. Otherwise I wouldn’t like to live here when I’m retired. It is really difficult to make friends here. Maybe it is the age or… I’ve been roaming around here seven years now and I keep chatting to people… I have acquaintances but not any actual friends, no real friend. … The social atmosphere is, if not rude but… a little reserved (Woman, Kauriala, 50).

Furthermore, walking is not always a choice but a necessity. In the absence of other options, it is no longer possible to see it only as an enjoyable practice facilitating, for instance, more social contacts or a slow lifestyle. For example, this interviewee does not have access to a car and has restricted possibilities to use public transportation or a taxi. Her attitudes support walking and cycling instead of driving, but, nevertheless, she walks and cycles out of necessity with unlimited mobility provided by car remaining a tempting but unrealistic vision.

When I moved here I was going to get a driving licence but then everything in my life went upside down and not at all like I had planned. And I couldn’t afford it. I assume I never will. … But I can imagine how I could get into driving a car, because I love moving around and going from one place to another. I have often thought about how much easier it would be by car. Especially as I’m getting older and getting all kinds of aches and pains… it is not as easy to cycle as before. So I have to say that lack of means restricts my travelling, I have to walk and cycle. … The travel distance to the health centre increased [when the local health centre was closed]. It’s bleak to go by bike or to walk in the sleet when you are ill (Woman, Kauriala, 50).

The interviews also included descriptions of recreational walking practices, which, in the case of Hirsimäki, took place in a car-dependent, quiet, peaceful, socially homogenous and structurally single-use environment. Those practices offered positive experiences and inhabitants hoped they could stay on in their neighbourhood into old age. The green areas and recreational possibilities were seen as outweighing the challenges of the car-dependent location and the rather long distance to services.

6 Conclusions

One of the most persistent justifications for the increased enthusiasm for nonmotorized travel has become the idea of liveability. Walkable urban environments, which make it possible to conduct daily affairs without needing to drive, are widely agreed to offer many benefits, such as health, well-being and wealth-in-time in everyday life. In contrast, environments, which are dominated by car traffic, are seen as limiting the pleasures of living in cities (Forsyth et al. 2009; Middleton 2010 on the UK context). However, the linkages between walkability, liveability and quality of life of urban dwellers remain vaguely defined. This is partly due to the elusiveness of the concepts used. However, it is also because down-to-earth empirical studies, which tackle the issue in all its multiplicity at street level, such as this one, have been few in number so far. What findings have been published, such as those mentioned in this chapter, suggest that walking encompasses a variety of experiences, which the general concepts of liveability and walkability tend to hide.

The interviews presented here also showed that walking is highly significant in producing liveability: it can offer possibilities to individuals to enrich their everyday life and relationships with their environment, and it can enhance their quality of life. They also indicate that people appropriate time-space in practical ways through walking, making it an art of manipulating and enjoying, a way of dwelling in a place (de Certeau 1984, p. xxii). In this way, practices of walking, including seemingly unproductive ones, can also be seen as active and productive. People are creating and shaping their own future possibilities for walking by making active choices. Walking sustains physical and social activity, enriching everyday life in the present, but it can also be creating a virtuous circle, where it produces good experiences and agency, which in turn generate the conditions for continuing walking in the future.

Hence, it can be claimed that promoting pedestrian-friendly, walkable environments enhances the liveability of cities. However, it is important to notice the heterogeneity of the desires and goals of everyday mobilities. Their meaning has to be understood as part of the broader context of everyday life and personal history. In addition, the potentials of walking are contingent on the socio-material environments where walking takes place. Thus, the analysis here also reveals the vagueness and unequal distribution and actualization of the promises of improved life through walking.

In arguing for policy measures to promote walking, catch-all phrases, such as sustainability and liveability, risk hiding the multiplicity and diversity of walking practices and experiences as well as a subjective and political nature of the concepts of liveability or quality of life. As Kaal (2011, p. 534) argues, ‘conditions which might be liveable for one, could be less liveable for another’.