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Walking the 24 hour city: temporality, intersectionality and the embodied experience in Dar es Salaam, Tshwane and Cardiff

Walking the 24 hour city is an 18 month multi-sited research project that looks at the relationship between identity, temporality and walking in three cities: Dar es Salaam, Tshwane and Cardiff.

Using a walking interview method and focus groups, this project has engaged with over 30 participants across the sites.

Details

To say people walk is in many ways a statement of the obvious. For the most part, we do it almost without noticing: small walks inside our homes; walks to get to or from places; walks to get to or from other modes of transport; and, even walks for pleasure or solace.

However, what we pay less attention to is the manner in which who we are, when we walk and what is happening around us changes our walks. It changes our routes, our choices and sometimes even changes how we perform our own identities.

Our project, “Walking the 24 hour city: temporality, intersectionality and the embodied experience in Dar es Salaam, Tshwane and Cardiff” wanted to understand and unpack these relationships, considering temporality, what changes when people walk. Does walking in the day or night influence pedestrians’ routes? What else changes when you walk in the dark or light? And then importantly, asking questions about how does that make you feel?

We also wanted to understand how people’s sense of identity: how they identify and how they are identified, shape and change their routes, their bodily experience of walking and their feelings as they move through their spaces.

So as a team of researchers from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Phomolong (South Africa) and Cardiff (UK) we investigated these questions.

Objectives

The project had a number of inter-related questions and sub-questions:

  • How does the experience of walking, as a mode of transport, change over the course of the day and night?
  • What are the different purposes of walking during different times?
  • What are the different challenges that occur when walking at different times of the day and night?
  • How do intersectional identities of race/ethnic identity, gender, socio-economic group and other social markers influence the experience, challenges and purposes of walking as a mode of transport through the 24 hour cycle?

Key facts

  • Start date: 1 January 2024
  • End Date: 31 May 2025
  • Funding: Volvo Research and Education Foundation

The Team

Cardiff

Picture of Margot Rubin

Dr Margot Rubin

Lecturer in Spatial Planning

Telephone
+44 29225 12054
Email
RubinM@cardiff.ac.uk
  • Ali Sharif, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University

South Africa

  • Professor Sarah Charlton, School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
  • Dr Priscila Izar, Centre for Urbanism and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Dar es Salaam

  • Mr Albert Cuthbert Nyiti, Assistant Research Fellow / Assistant Lecturer, Ardhi University, Institute of Human Settlement Studies (IHSS), Tanzania

Curation and Creative outputs

  • Dr Alex Halligey, Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Inequality in Walking the 24 Hour City

Temporality, Intersectionality and the Embodied Experience in Dar es Salaam, Tshwane and Cardiff.

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