Walking Further: new perspectives on long-distance walking and walking distance

Session Convenors: Farzaneh Bahrami (University of Groningen) and Simon Cook (Birmingham City University)

Walking is an integral form of everyday and extraordinary mobility, meaningful in the lives of individuals, communities, places, and societies. As a mode of transport, however, walking is generally considered as a shorter-distance solution, logic built into urban form, transport systems and related policies. This is limiting and restricts the contribution walking can make to low-carbon, healthy, human-centred mobility futures. As a species, humans are exceptional walkers. We used to walk much longer distances than we do today, and long-distance walking has been an important aspect of utilitarian and cultural mobility throughout history. What has changed and can we envision mobility futures where walking distances are significantly longer once again? What impacts would this have on the understanding, design, planning and practices of walking?

This session is interested in walking further, both in terms of considering the potential of increasing notions of ‘walkable’ and investigating the practices of long(er) distance walking. As such, we welcome papers taking an empirical, theoretical, analytical, conceptual, creative or applied approach to the topic of long-distance walking and walking distance. We also encourage contributions that engage with long-distance walking in varied contexts, including transport, tourism, leisure, sport, spirituality, pilgrimage, urban design, and cultural and literary history. Collectively, we hope the session challenges and pushes forward ideas around walking distance and provides new perspectives on long-distance walking.

We therefore invite papers that attend to, but are by no means limited to, the following themes:

Conceptualisations of walking distance and long-distance walking 
Long-distance walking behaviours and uses
Experiences and perceptions of long-distance walking
Planning and providing for long-distance walking 
Long-distance walking paths, infrastructures and landscapes
Long-distance walking as transport
Long-distance walking as tourism
Long-distance walking as sport or leisure
Long-distance walking as pilgrimage and spirituality 
Long-distance walking in literary and cultural history
Policies and initiatives for long-distance walking (recognising and empowering niche practices)
Long-distance walking advocacy and activism 
Long-distance walking in urban and rural areas
Long-distance walking as challenge and charity
Walking distance in urban planning and urban projects
Acceptable Walking Distance and its environmental correlates
Documenting, mapping and representing long-distance walking 
Artistic and creative approaches to long-distance walking
 

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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If you would like to submit a paper, please send abstracts (c.250 words) to Farzaneh Bahrami (f.bahrami@rug.nl) and Simon Cook (Simon.Cook@bcu.ac.uk)