Routledge Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow (Social Justice)

Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow documents a powerful and under-researched form of urban governance that focuses on pedestrian flow. This logic, which Nicholas Blomley terms 'pedestrianism', values public space not in terms of its aesthetic merits, or its success in promoting public citizenship and democracy. Rather, the function of the sidewalk is understood to be the promotion and facilitation of pedestrian flow and circulation, predicated on the appropriate arrangement of people and objects. This remarkably pervasive yet overlooked logic shapes the ways in which public space is regulated, conceived of, and argued about. Rights of Passage shows how the sidewalk is literally produced, encoded, rendered legible and operational with reference to a dense array of codes, diagrams, specifications, academic and professional networks, engineering rubrics, regulation and case law – all in the name of unfettered circulation. Although a powerful form of governance, pedestrianism tends to be obscured by grander and more visible forms of urban regulation. The rationality at work here may appear commonplace; but, precisely because it is uncontroversial, pedestrianism is able to operate below the academic and political radar. Complicating the prevailing tendency to focus on the socially directive nature of public space regulation, Blomley reveals the particular ways in which pedestrianism deactivates rights-based claims to public space. Review '... Rights of Passage serves to document the particular rationality by which sidewalks are understood, regulated, and evaluated. Blomley argues that an inability to appreciate what leads to an engineer's narrow "goal of balancing street traffic in an inclusionary and rational manner" (p. 30) is to miss how such spaces for the public are reproduced over time. The book presents the perspectives of governing authorities tasked with sidewalk management; introduces prevailing laws, legal decisions, and design standards; and describes the history that shapes our collective understanding of sidewalks.' - Katia Balassiano, Journal of Planning Education and Research About the Author Nicholas Blomley is Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University, Canada.