Outline how material things favour the activities of some groups of people over others on a street you know.
Material objects play a very important role in everyday lives and often happens that they are taken for granted so in consequence overlooked.Close investigation of activities on my chosen street: Leith Walk in Edinburgh along with comparison to City Road in Cardiff helped me to identify few inequalities.
Leith Walk is one of the longest streets in Edinburgh and is situated in very multi cultural part of the city-Leith, which was originally separated from Edinburgh until the merger in 1920.It’s worth to mention that City Limits Bar on Leith Walk stands exactly on the old line dividing Leith from Edinburgh.The street itself is very wide, both sides are lined with variety of shops, supermarkets, charity, banks, coffee shops.
First thing I would like to look at more closely is how street infrastructure determines activities of group’s operating in a structure ; pedestrians, motorists,cyclists. All of them use Leith Walk to get an access to the buildings situated in the area, where different type of activities are happening, for example; work places, universities, shops, restaurants or just passing through to get to the further destination.Conflict occurs when the living organism called traffic cross the path of the other living structure operating in the same infrastructure called pedestrian movement.Main problem for the pedestrians is that the street is missing control crossings and traffic islands which automatically favour any type of vehicles.Leith Walk pale in comparison to City Road where traffic islands play an important role in helping people to cross the road without affecting the traffic flow( Material Lives, 2009 scene 1) There is also a constant fight for a space between buses, cars and the cyclists.Potholes and painted lanes right on the outside of parked cars make cyclists feel more vulnerable.In one hand, we have cyclists who want a...