Rights of Passage

Nicholas Blomley is Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

• 1. Pedestrianism Pedestrianism and Police. Pedestrianism, People and Things. Pedestrianism and Social Justice. Overview of Contents 2. Civic Humanism and the Sidewalk The Sidewalk as Political Space. The Sidewalk as Civic Space. The Sidewalk as Walking Space 3. Thinking Like an Engineer Administrative Pedestrianism. Pervasive Pedestrianism. The Taken for Granted 4. Producing and Policing the Sidewalk Sidewalk Law; Obstruction and Encroachments. Other Sidewalk Rationalities 5. The History of Pedestrianism The Invention of the Sidewalk. The Reformist Sidewalk. Administrative Pedestrianism at Work. The Public Sidewalk. The Incomplete Sidewalk 6. Judicial Pedestrianism Introduction. The Public Highway 7. Obstructions of Justice? Speech, Protest and Circulation. Sidewalks, the Homeless, and Judicial Pedestrianism. Things and Bodies 8. Taking a Constitutional: Circulation, Begging, and the Mobile Self Introduction; Political Pedestrianism. Conclusions 9. Hidden in Plain View

'... Rights of Passage serves to document the particular rationality by which sidewalks are understood, regulated, and evaluated. Blomley argues that an inability to appreciate what leads to an engineer's narrow "goal of balancing street traffic in an inclusionary and rational manner" (p. 30) is to miss how such spaces for the public are reproduced over time. The book presents the perspectives of governing authorities tasked with sidewalk management; introduces prevailing laws, legal decisions, and design standards; and describes the history that shapes our collective understanding of sidewalks.' - Katia Balassiano, Journal of Planning Education and Research