A rhythmanalysis approach to understanding the vending-walking forms and everyday use of urban street space in Yuncheng, China

Ziwen Sun

doi:10.1177/0042098021997044

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.

Highlights

Understanding walking forms and walkable spaces is becoming an increasingly significant topic in interdisciplinary studies (e.g. D’Haese et al, 2015; Fan et al, 2017; Giles-Corti et al, 2016; Sallis et al, 2016; Sun et al, 2020)
He explains the different rhythms in this way: arrhythmia, ‘reflected by precarity, disturbances and desynchronisation’, polyrhythmia, ‘situated between instability and flexibility’ and eurhythmia, ‘composed of diverse and equilibrate rhythms’ (Marcu, 2017: 406)
Along with other similar vendors and shop owners, MY15 indicated that during their long-standing existence serving the arrhythmia of nearby pedestrians, they were familiar with almost all potential customers

Summary

Introduction

Understanding walking forms and walkable spaces is becoming an increasingly significant topic in interdisciplinary studies (e.g. D’Haese et al, 2015; Fan et al, 2017; Giles-Corti et al, 2016; Sallis et al, 2016; Sun et al, 2020). His study highlights the analysis of rhythms to understand a set of practices carried out by different actors, including careers, feelings, language and work He explains the different rhythms in this way: arrhythmia, ‘reflected by precarity, disturbances and desynchronisation’, polyrhythmia, ‘situated between instability and flexibility’ and eurhythmia, ‘composed of diverse and equilibrate rhythms’ (Marcu, 2017: 406). Based on the above studies, and with the aim of identifying and analysing heterogeneous rhythms in the context of dynamic street vendors and pedestrians in the everchanging street space of Chinese cities, I further develop the framework by placing at the core of the analysis the meaning of rhythmic vending–walking relations. How do street vendors and pedestrians (co-/re-)produce a transient walkable space? and why?

Methodology

Findings

Conclusions