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down our ethnographic fieldwork in lancaster it s far from finished but we need to move on to worcester we re lucky with lancaster we both live here so although over the next seven or eight months we ll be making frequent trips away to worcester leicester and leeds we ll also keep coming home and home is our field in fact griet will soon be moving into our lancaster ethnographic neighbourhood so will be even more fully in the field than she s been already up until christmas griet continued to do the majority of the ethnographic work with our households in fairfield and abraham heights whilst i continued conducting go alongs and household interviews across the broader lancaster morecambe and heysham district we also started to do more pure ethnographic observation this arose out of a sense that really to understand walking and cycling which is after all a key objective of our research project we need to spend more time actually watching people engaged in the very doing of these practices so for example from cafe windows we have been watching how people on foot negotiate urban space yes that s a poncy way of saying walking but simply saying walking doesn t quite capture what it is that people do if you sit for an hour and watch a section of a pedestrianised city centre as we have been doing in lancaster you start to understand the very different ways in which people move how people walk alone in groups carefully warily briskly boldly you start to see how many different things people on foot do talking goofing around the school kids anyway texting and how some people engage in the work of self presentation as they move checking their appearance through their reflections in shop windows and you start to notice all the details which you might otherwise miss the different ways in which people carry objects and the range of objects they carry the different kinds of clothes they wear and what this might say about how they ve arrived in the city centre by car by bus by bike on foot people s footwear and how this footwear seems to either help or hinder their movement the different ways in which people deal with rain using umbrellas pulling up hoods donning hats or doing nothing we have also been positioning ourselves at junctions in order to observe the flows and rhythms of different modes of mobility as well as to talk to people moving on foot or by bike we concentrated our ethnographic attention particularly on one junction at penny street bridge at the southern entry to lancaster city centre under pressure from cycling england arising from the district s status as a cycling demonstration town this junction has recently been reconfigured in an attempt to make it better for people on bikes part of our mission was to try to understand how the changes have affected cycling and most particularly whether there s been any improvement in the experiences of people riding bikes through the junction it s too complex to give any straightforward answer to that so i ll not try here though obviously i will try somewhere at some point but will instead skip ahead whilst we ll keep coming back to lancaster and to that extent it s the roots of our qualitative inquiry it s time to move on and we have to worcester we d already explored worcester and had some meetings with interested people there last year but our first proper ethnographic foray due for early january got postponed by the snow griet s plane back home from christmas in belgium was cancelled as were trains between lancaster and birmingham so we put our first entry into the field on ermm ice we finally got going in worcester a couple of weeks ago spending a few days walking and cycling around and particularly around our ethnographic neighbourhood in the south west of the city lower wick don t worry i ve ordered a few more worcester walking and cycling maps as this one has now moved well beyond its last legs and into the recycling box lower wick was developed on an area of orchard land near where the rivers teme and severn meet at the end of the 1960s the suburb has a parade of shops along with a pub the maple leaf at its centre you might think that the maple leaf is a strange name for a pub until you realise that all the street names in this part of lower wick have something to do with canada starting from a position of almost complete ignorance we re very interested to see the mobility patterns among lower wick s residents among my assumptions are that the local shops might service many people s everyday needs and that st john s about a mile to the north across from worcester city centre on the west side of the river severn provides a few more options such as a large and new sainsburys but that worcester remains the main centre that said lower wick is located very close to the a4440 which runs around worcester and provides good links to the m5 so for those with access to cars it s relatively easy to get out and go elsewhere and if you want to go shopping but avoid potential congestion in worcester city centre and if you ve got a car you might chose to go about five miles south west to malvern but they re all assumptions still to be tested and also although of course all modes of mobility are connected we re interested rather more in walking and cycling than we are in car travel one interesting feature of lower wick are two particularly long alleyways running through the area these provide pretty direct walking corridors out of the neighbourhood towards st john s but how do people use and experience them we ll be finding out in the weeks to come we saw relatively few people moving around by bike in our three days exploring the area but currently under construction and due to be completed this summer is a walking and cycling bridge over the river severn at diglis bridge a short distance to the east of lower wick the soon to be completed bridge also forms part of an expanding network of off road cycling routes connecting lower wick not only to worcester city centre but to other parts of the district too so we re also interested in the extent to which this improving local walking and cycling infrastructure might impact on people s everyday mobilities so we re back in worcester again tomorrow for another three days of fieldwork with a video camera this time so watch out posted in fieldwork lancaster worcester tagged fieldwork lancaster worcester 1 comment where are we up to november 25 2009 by dave horton whilst griet and i have both got our teeth firmly stuck into the lancaster stint of our year s fieldwork i m also very conscious that some people might be wondering why they ve not heard from us or wondering when we ll be in touch again or perhaps even be wondering if we ve just completely disappeared off the face of lancaster if not the planet one of the difficulties of doing research with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways in four different places is that to be honest it s hard to keep in as regular contact with people as we d like speaking frankly it s one of things i like least about what we re doing although maybe it s only my perception and most people probably aren t actually too bothered i do sometimes feel like i m becoming the kind of professional worker i d really rather not the kind of person who only gets in touch with people when he needs them try though i do i think there is a danger of that and i don t like it and i apologise completely and unreservedly to anyone who experiences my our neglect in that way november continues to be mainly wet windy and generally very grey i fell off my bike on the ice late at night whilst riding in the yorkshire dales that ll teach me for doing daft things at the beginning of the month and have been nursing a cracked rib ever since i m still able to move around by bike and on foot it s mainly laughing which is a problem wow it hurts so not only has november been a bit grey but i ve also had to try hard to be serious which i find rather difficult at the best of times hmmm griet s shouldering more of the ethnographic fieldwork at the moment whilst i m doing more of the household interviews and accompanied journeys or go alongs we re going days at a time without seeing one another and then when we catch up we sort of splurge out our rapidly accumulating experiences our meetings with very many very different people all the stories of moving around lancaster morecambe heysham and further afield which we re so privileged to be being privvy to christmas feels like it s just around the corner and we ve a lot more fieldwork to do before then as well as dealing with all the other aspects of our work meetings writing developing ideas rather unfortunately going into the field doesn t spell the end of the rest of life so that fieldwork sometimes feels like just one more admittedly very big in fact the biggest by some margin ball to juggle we re running a workshop here at lancaster environment centre on the 16th december ethnographies of cycling and have to prepare for that for example but hopefully if you re wondering where we are you ll hear from us soon but if you don t hear from us and you are really wondering where we are then please do drop us a line or give us a ring it d be great to hear from you posted in fieldwork lancaster tagged fieldwork lancaster leave a comment blocking walking and cycling november 25 2009 by dave horton when transport professionals talk about barriers to walking and cycling they can be referring to many different things some of the more obvious barriers include fear of motorised traffic poor or even non existent walking and cycling infrastructure lack of political and other institutional support and a whole host of other difficult to tackle issues such as hills rain and distance but when griet and i did a walking tour of our ethnographic neighbourhood in lancaster recently we came across a very major barrier to walking and cycling which i d not really thought much about before private land we transport types sometimes talk about severances to walking and cycling but by this we re almost always referring in my experience to the ways in which railways major roads especially urban dual carriageways and motorways and big retail developments can block routes which people travelling on foot or by bike might otherwise take i already knew of this issue in the areas of west lancaster on which we re focusing our ethnographic attention fairfield and abraham heights the west coast main railway line runs north south along the eastern side of the neighbourhood and this really reduces the permeability between it and lancaster city centre you can see this very well on a satellite view of the area which you can look at via google map just type in meeting house lane lancaster and you ll get to a view of the general area and be able to see how there s no crossing of the railway south of meeting house lane until you get to carr house lane and this route is only available to pedestrians and cyclists which is one of the reasons this neighbourhood is very interesting to us in many ways it s more accessible by bike and on foot than it is by car the railway is a major severance to walking and cycling in the area of course on a smaller scale every road is also rather ironically a severance to mobility especially the mobility of certain groups of people and perhaps most obviously the oldest and youngest members of our communities who arguably may be precisely the groups which need community the most my son bobby is 8 and we re currently going through a process of allowing him a growing amount of independence in mobility this makes us very conscious of roads and how difficult and dangerous different roads might be for him to cross but we re all affected by roads in his landmark study of residential streets in san francisco published in the book livable streets 1981 university of california press berkeley don appleyard demonstrated how motorised traffic kills community appleyard found for example that residents of streets with light traffic had on average three more friends and twice as many acquaintances as the people on streets with heavy traffic and that as the amount of traffic increases the space people consider to be their territory shrinks but i m digressing as griet and i walked around the area we became much more aware of the very real barrier to walking and cycling through and around our neighbourhood which is created by a block of privatised land separating the two distinct areas of it abraham heights to the west fairfield to the east go to google map and you can see it extraordinarily clearly from towneley close there are two clear obvious routes which could link abraham heights to fairfield but which don t one route goes east out of towneley close via the community orchard and past the allotments to the walking and cycling route which runs north south through fairfield this links to the millennium bridge and so much of the rest of the district to the north and carr house lane and then the canal and so also to much of the rest of the district to the south apparently this route was blocked without warning by a landowner a few years ago but after much local effort it is shortly to be re opened the second route is actually a road but it s a private road patrolled by big and ugly gates it would make an excellent route from abraham heights to the town centre one which avoids having to use westbourne lane but with this route blocked and the other not yet re opened people must use westbourne lane westbourne lane is a relatively pleasant road full of trees lined with large properties almost rural in its feel but for some of its length there s a pavement along only one side and that pavement is skinny and often slippy so that people often walk in the road the road also goes up and down a hill which when combined with the motorised traffic which can travel very fast and close means it s uncomfortable for people who aren t very confident riding a bike which includes most kids and perhaps especially the people who care for those kids so from abraham heights there is currently no option when travelling east towards lancaster city centre but to use westbourne road westbourne road is a very poor route for walking and cycling there are two alternative routes for walking and cycling both far superior to the current option one will shortly hopefully be re opened the other to the best of my knowledge is not even on people s radars as a route which might potentially be opened up though it would provide another great route because it is reasonably well surfaced and so walk able and cycle able whatever the weather but for reasons i do not profess to understand it is blocked by big impenetrable gates behind those gates are some very big houses as griet and i walked around trespassing finding our way blocked being made to feel very clearly that we oughtn t to be there i felt very angry a stranger in my own community treading on land which ought to ...