Everyday use of urban street spaces: the spatio-temporal relations between pedestrians and street vendors: a case study in Yuncheng, China

ABSTRACT

In contemporary Chinese cities dynamic street vendors are a common presence, frequently occupying spaces where many people regularly walk, leading to functional changes to the streets. This research aim was to examine the everyday use of urban streets at a micro-scale, to explore spatio-temporal relations between the fixed built environment and the ways in which vendors and pedestrians co-produce walkable space and walking behaviours over time. Using field observation and behaviour mapping, we compared spatio-temporal data and spatial patterns of street activities over four daily periods of three urban street spaces in the medium-sized city of Yuncheng. The results indicate that such activities produce environment-behaviour interactions and socio-spatial relations, which leads to an understanding of how city life occurs. The conclusions suggest that vending is important for giving life to urban areas and increasing residents’ physical activity, so that urban governors and designers should consider how to facilitate it better.

KEYWORDS:

• Walking
• transient walkable space
• urban street activities
• spatio-temporal relations
• street vendors

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Catharine Ward-Thompson, Tahl Kaminer, Chengrun Li, Xi Chen, Su Hu, Sharon Woolf and the 16 ‘Walking Practice’ workshop participants who contributed fruitful discussions and/or parts of the GIS database. We would also like to express our gratitude to Yang Yu, Ruyue Zhao and the 13 students at Harbin Institute of Technology who supported this methodology development in the early stage. Finally, we would like to thank the editors and reviewers for their valuable comments and help with this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council [No.201608060149], China Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development [K22018130], Tweedie Exploration Fellowship, Henry Lester Trust and Great Britain-China Educational Trust.