Pedestrian technologies: Redesigning citizens, organizers, and technical professionals

This dissertation presents a critical cultural analysis of pedestrian advocacy as a practice of technological citizenship, and argues that “pedestrian technologies” can usefully focus thinking and action for progressive social change. The study addresses a significant concern in Science and Technology Studies scholarship: that democracy is compromised when citizens are inadequately engaged with technological inquiry. The analysis pivots around the derivation of a special category of technology—“pedestrian technologies.” This category includes such items as crosswalks, sidewalks, and street signs but also helps illuminate characteristics of other socio/technological systems. Pedestrian technology is then used as the focus of cultural activities involving the reconsideration and redesign of transportation systems in the United States from the level of neighborhood-based actions to nationwide organizing. These pedestrian-centered inter/actions provoke a reconsideration of the meaning of citizenship, place, collaboration, and research. The study assesses the important roles citizens, transportation professionals, and organizers play in opening and closing technical systems as part of the democratic process. The empirical research is based on qualitative fieldwork spanning a six-year period in Troy, New York, the Northwest region (including Seattle and Portland), and the organizations, conferences, and Internet forums that support pedestrian advocacy in the United States.