The Great Highway
A human-centered approach to urban planning
The following is a long-form autoethnography reflecting a six month academic research project on human-urban interaction.
Methods:
In-Depth Interviews, Participant Observation, User Shadowing, Field Ethnography
Read Time: 14 min
The Edge of the Western World: Transformations of Space
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Have you ever seen a Mariachi band, donned in white, singing and playing music along an empty highway, serenading the setting sun and the sea, as people danced around them? Have you seen a highway free of cars, but filled with thousands of people dressed as witches, ghosts, monsters, or even dinosaurs, as they came together to haunt in their Halloween best? Perhaps you have seen a rally of cyclists, slowly pedalling in front of a row of angry cars that beep and yell at the road block, whilst one person on their evening run takes advantage of the now empty street ahead of the cyclists, to run his own personal marathon?
I watched these spontaneous processions, these costumed congregations, and these frequent protests unfold at the Great Walkway. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco’s scenic Great Highway has been closed to car traffic and transformed into a ‘Great Walkway’. Intended as a space for safe outdoor exercise and recreation, the closure of this highway triggered intense political and cultural debate in the city – with many residents protesting to have the highway re-opened to car use. The city soon came to a compromise, in which the highway is open to cars from Monday to Thursday, and is converted into a Walkway from Friday to Sunday. This changing use of space inspired me to look at how places come to be defined, and how one space can come to take on multiple meanings and functions.
“There’s an invitation – that road – that invites possibility of movement.”
There is a strange sense of freedom in being able to walk on a highway any time of day or night. It feels almost post-apocalyptic. The image of an empty road with nature taking over it is often associated with zombie films. The Great Walkway however transforms this image of the empty road, and evokes instead a new form of social space. Unlike a traditional park, the Great Walkway encourages movement. Fascinated by the contrasting functions of the Highway-turned-Walkway, I turned to the exploration of sensorial modes to try and capture how one long stretch of road could come to inspire and rouse a range of different sensory experiences, moods, and atmospheres.
Source: @safestreetrebel, Twitter
Source: Self
Source: Self
Shifting moods and atmospheres
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The walkway feels like a moving café. A place where people come together to talk, to people watch, to enjoy solitude, or to learn. I experience the same feeling at the Walkway as I do in a bustling café – the awe and wonder when you realize that all of the strangers around you have their own unique lives and stories. Perhaps these strangers will never speak to each other, perhaps they will never see each other again. But for a moment, they share this space of intersecting lives. Doreen Massey (2005) describes this moment of connected moving lives within space as “throwntogetherness”. It is this web of movement at the Great Highway-Walkway which has allowed the space to be in continual construction and transformation.
One informant, Krista, expressed this very sentiment of throwntogetherness when she told me of her vision to paint a mural which would capture the multitude of stories that float along the Walkway:
“A mural of the different fragments of conversations that float out into the air would be another beautiful thing. There are children learning… there’s break ups happening, there’s conversations, there’s catch-ups, there’s just the wealth of words and emotions… Parents are going out with their teenagers and having conversations… Teens use that space with their friends and they’re laughing and taking pictures and skateboarding… That demonstration of population and people in all their different shapes. I love a little like- funny little mural that has all the different shapes, you know – like exaggerate the tall and short people, skinny people, exaggerate the curves, the heights, the colours. Show it all off.”
I wanted to understand what it was about the Walkway that invited such an atmosphere, a form so different and in contrast to when the space is used by cars. Inspired by Billy Ehn, who discusses the changes in atmosphere produced by the interplay of “tempos, rhythms, and modes in a busy transit space” (2015, p.82), I took to a journey through the senses to try to capture the contrasting moods and sensory experiences of the Walkway and Highway.
I began with the scents of the Walkway. Here I smell the ocean salt in the air mingling with the sweetness of the flowering ice plants growing on the median strip and the edges of the sand dunes. I smell the sunscreen, on myself, and on others walking past. I smell coffee wafting from the paper cups held by people on peripatetic coffee dates. Missing from the air was the usual odour of the Highway – the smell of car fumes mingling with the cigarette smoke that wafts out of a driver’s window.
Another sensory transformation of the Walkway are the changing sounds. When the Highway is open for cars only, the only space available to walk in this area is a winding trail about 4-foot-wide running parallel with the Highway. It is on this trail where I and my informants could capture the different soundscape of the Highway on weekdays.
Source: San Francisco Recreation and Parks
One informant, Jane, noted how during the entire year of the Highway closure, she could hear the calls of birds and hawks. When the Highway opened back up to cars on weekdays, she heard beeping and honking of excited drivers celebrating with each other on their morning commute. The rumbling of the engines and the hum of the wheels announce the waking of the Highway on weekdays, only to disappear and be replaced come weekend with the sound of footsteps walking and jogging, rollerblades and pram wheels spinning, and laughter and conversation flowing.
On the Walkway, there was a shared soundscape in which everyone becomes an instrument. The Highway, in contrast, induced the opposite. Many of my pro-Highway informants discussed the joy of listening to music whilst they drove on the Highway, as though “creating not only their own private bubbles but also their own emotional microclimates” (Ehn 2015, p.94). Whilst I also noticed many walkers and joggers using headphones, none of the pro-Walkway informants ascribed any importance to listening to music on the Walkway.
Finally, there was the changing tempo of rhythm of the Highway and Walkway. On the Highway, the cars all move at the same pace – 35mph. The 3.5 mile-long Highway takes drivers five minutes to drive from entry to exit. On the Walkway, the same distance takes 40 minutes to walk. Rebecca Solnit (2000) explores the unique experience of walking and how it allows us to connect with the environment and with ourselves by inviting us to slow down and engage with the minutiae of the world. Krista also noted how this slowing down and connective spirit applies to those we share the space with:
“It’s the exact perfect length for the walk and talk… The deep talks… Where you can talk about heavy things and you’re not sitting in them – you’re moving and they’re – they’re moving behind you, they’re releasing behind you…
It’s like a meditation, it takes a while for these things to come up and lift up out of the air.”
On the Walkway, there is no pressure of time. There is no need to reach an end destination. One can move off the Walkway at any time. There is also no resistance from the ground. As the paved Walkway is smooth and level, it provides the “affordances” (Gibson, 1986) of stability and support to be peripatetic without the need to consciously be aware of our movement. Instead, our movement on the Walkway becomes automatic. The narrow pathway next to the Highway, however, brings a degree of hyper-awareness as the gravel here is unstable, with many cracks, dips, inclines, and curves throughout. Many of my informants expressed this feeling of discomfort and instability on the old trail, often mentioning that the lack of space and the broken gravel make it difficult, if not impossible, to safely take their dogs on walks or to take their children out on their bicycles, particularly as there are no safety barriers between the Highway and the pathway – there is only a regular curb.
The gravel trail next to Highway feels cramped and is difficult to navigate with others. Runners must swerve to get past walkers, who can feel the runner’s breath on the nape of their neck. Those who do walk their dog pull their leash to move them away from others. The ground is unsteady, and gravel rolls hazardously under your foot. When you walk on the pathway you are consciously aware of it, but on the Walkway, you don’t have to consciously think of the ground. Though many pro-Walkway informants expressed that there is not enough space on this pathway to afford the different kinds of movement that the Walkway allows, the pro-Highway drivers expressed that this was not important.
The changing atmospheres of the Walkway, Highway, and gravel pathway are carried through the air and through the people using the spaces to create different emotional rhythms. These emotional rhythms shape the physical experience of our own bodily habits.
Shifting bodily habits
“It’s like a dance... a physical dance in space. So, we got used to dancing one way and now we’ve got to shift our tempo.”
When the compromise was instated, several pro-Walkway informants experienced moments in which they forgot that the Highway was open to cars, as the Highway does not always have heavy car traffic, it can sometimes appear empty. Krista notes, “I forget myself sometimes when I’m walking the dogs I go ‘oh shit’ like, I look down and there are cars here now. I just got really used to [the Walkway]. To feeling safe. To fundamentally feeling safe.”
This shift in bodily habits and the jarring change of routine was anticipated by the local government, which placed signs at each crosswalk to remind pedestrians that there was now car traffic on the Highway. These same crosswalks have been on the Highway many years before the pandemic, and yet this is the first time that signs have been posted to inform people how to use them. This quickly changing use of space made me realize how quickly bodily habits form, and how connected these habits are to our use of space. There is a symbiotic relationship between our bodies and our environment. As Casey (1996) notes, “we are not only in places, but of them.”
Even with these signboards, I notice lately several people crossing the Highway on the non-pedestrian-crossing areas. This never used to happen before the Walkway was created. Now, people continue to negotiate their movement in this space, and the Walkway lingers even on the weekdays in which it is intended for cars.
The Walkway developed into a space in which people came to learn new bodily forms and habits. The Walkway has become a popular place for people to learn and practice riding bicycles, rollerblades, and skateboards. This use of the Walkway as a safe space to engage in new forms of movement was the most commonly given answer from informants when asked what the most unique element of the space was. The closure of the Great Highway transformed this space from a transport and destination-oriented space, into a place for journey-oriented “wayfaring” (Ingold, 2006).
Creating and contesting space
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The sensorial connections between our bodily habits and spatial atmospheres are the driving force that shapes how places are contested and created. At the start of my research, I truly did not understand the rage of those who were against the Walkway. Their anger felt out of touch to me, and to some degree it still does. While some pro-Highway informants stated that the closure added another thirty minutes to their route, I (and many pro-Walkway informants) found that taking the neighbourhood roads add only an extra three to five minutes on our drive. Of course, my own experiences are that of someone who enjoys the Walkway. Part of the difficulty in understanding the pro-Highway informant’s feelings regarding the Walkway was their refusal to walk on it and experience it. Instead, these informants expressed the ecstasy they felt when driving on the road. In contrast to the throwntogetherness of the walkway, the Highway was about the utility, the principle of having a dedicated road for cars to avoid neighbourhood streets, and about the joy of driving in solitude, listening to music, and feeling a short moment of serenity during their commute to and from work.
Our bodies are in “passionate liaison” (Bachelard, 1994) with the spaces we inhabit, and as these spaces are an extension of the home, the Great Highway-Walkway debate has brought out emotionally-charged responses. I have observed countless homes in the neighbourhood with posters displayed to express their support either for or against the Walkway. Two of my informants have had friendships effected with their neighbours who are on opposite sides of the Highway debate. Others, such as Alex, have referred to the contestation of this space as a “battle”.
Source: San Francisco Remembered
Source: Twitter
This battle over Highways in San Francisco is not new. The 1960s Freeway Revolt saw numerous protests and rallies against the development of freeways throughout the city (Carlsson, n.d.). People have always played a part in the negotiation of the spaces they inhabit, seeking to push and “break topological chains (Debord, 1959). Today, the Freeway Revolt is revitalized through The Great Walkway Civil Disobedience Society, a growing community hosting protests to reclaim the Walkway as a permanent car-free space.
Martin Heidegger argued that we do not experience spaces through scientific understandings of the environment, but through the bodily and social uses of it. Indeed, places become within their location through human movement (Heidegger, 1971). The Great Highway becomes The Great Walkway through bodily and social movement. The Walkway remains a space for visitors to move through, to experience flow, and to create new paths. It is now a shared place where walkers, wheelers, or skaters take care of it on the weekend, and return it to drivers for their work week.
On a Sunday evening, my informant Leyla and I watch as the purple dusk powders the sky at the edge of the Western world. We sit on a rock in the median of the Walkway, under a traffic light that switches lights for no one, and watch the sun set behind the sea. Only, I find myself watching the other people and Leyla more. At sunsets, the movement stops, and everyone halts their walking, riding, cycling. They stop to watch and photograph the sun setting below the horizon. Like holding a breath. As soon as the sun has dipped beneath the ocean, the movement on the Walkway begins again.
References Bachelard, G., 1994. The house. From cellar to garret. The significance of the hut. In: The Poetics of Space. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, pp.3 - 37. ​ Casey, E., 1996. How to Get From Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time. Phenomenological Prolegomena. In: S. Feld and K. Basso, ed., Senses of Place. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, pp.13 - 52. ​ Cahighways.org. n.d. California Highways (www.cahighways.org): Telling a Story through Highway and Planning Maps: San Francisco/Bay Area Freeway Development (Part 1—The City of San Francisco). [online] Available at: . ​ Carlsson, C., n.d. The Freeway Revolt - FoundSF. [online] Foundsf.org. Available at: . Ehn, B., Löfgren, O. and Wilk, R., n.d. Exploring everyday life. ​ safestreetrebel. 2021. The Great Walkway Civil Disobedience Society. [online] Available at: . ​ Gibson, J., 1986. The ecological approach to visual perception. New York: Psychology Press. ​ Ingold, T., 2006. Lines: A Brief History. Routledge. ​ Knabb, K. and Debord, G., 2007. Situationist international anthology. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets. ​ Massey, D., 2015. For space. London: SAGE. ​ Solnit, R., 2000. Wanderlust. New York: Penguin Books. ​ Sfrecpark.org. 2021. The Great Highway Project | San Francisco Recreation and Parks, CA. [online] Available at: . *All photos are my own unless stated otherwise.