Enunciating outrage: Sidewalk mobility injustice and activism

Abstract

This article focuses on winter pedestrian conditions and sidewalk clearing activism in the Canadian city of St. John’s where most sidewalks are left uncleared over its long winters. The study employs ethnographic methods, with a focus on participants’ autoethnographic accounts of navigating the city in winter and advocating for changes in snow clearing – accounts that also form the core of a documentary film directed by the authors. The findings demonstrate how uncleared sidewalks lead to an urban winter environment that is disabling, furthering existing mobility injustices produced by intersections between various forms of inequality and limited public or active transportation options. City residents enunciate their outrage about this situation through physical mobility practices such as walking in the middle of vehicle lanes and self-conscious critiques of everyday idioms about the ‘hardiness’ of residents. This study highlights the importance of taking seasonality into account when examining conditions for pedestrian mobilities.