Abstract
In Chinese cities, informal street vendors often appear in a transient space intertwined with a large number of pedestrians and heterogeneity, in contrast with the dichotomous construction of static built environment and dynamic street activity examined in most studies on walkability. This paper explores the rhythm of everyday street spaces and the temporary experiences of pedestrians and street vendors in Yuncheng, China. The author argues that street vendors are particularly well suited for capturing city rhythms and can discern the tempo of social life and pedestrians in urban street spaces. Following Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis approach and drawing on 86 semi-structured interviews combined with on-site observation in three street spaces, this paper investigates how rhythms are linked to spatial form, time and the everyday street activity of walking and vending. It expands an analytical framework in both daily rhythms and long-standing rhythms, including arrhythmia, eurhythmia and polyrhythmia. The conclusions provide an alternative way of understanding why pedestrians emerge, through considering how street vendors temporarily meet the everyday needs of different pedestrians in specific, real and detailed ways. Such fine-grained narratives, in turn, demonstrate the need to advance theoretical and empirical understandings of multiple rhythms in relation to walkable space and walking forms.
摘要
在中国城市，非正规街头小贩经常出没于交通枢纽，这些地点有大量行人，表现出异质性，这与大多数步行性研究中考察的静态建筑环境和动态街头活动的二分法结构形成鲜明对比。本文探讨了中国运城日常街头空间的节奏以及行人和街头小贩的即时体验。作者认为，街头小贩特别适合捕捉城市节奏，能够辨别城市街头空间中社会生活和行入的节奏。本文遵循列斐伏尔(Lefebvre)的节奏分析方法，结合86次半结构化访谈以及对三个街头空间的现场观察，研究了节奏与空间形式、时间以及日常的步行和贩卖等街头活动之间的关系。本文扩展了日常节奏和长期节奏的分析框架，包括失常节奏、正常节奏和复合节奏。通过考虑街头小贩如何以具体、真实和详细的方式即时满足不同行人的日常需求，本文的结论为理解行人的出现提供了另一种方式。这种细粒度的叙事反过来证明，需要推进与步行空间和步行形式相关的多重节奏的理论和实证理解。