Walking in the City of Signs: Tracking Pedestrians in Glasgow

This paper aims to determine the way in which materialities within the environment influence pedestrians’ movements when searching for signs. The use of mobile methods to observe and track human interactions with the signs in a city contributes to the empirical data collection on everyday life practices of this study. This article presents the findings from non-participatory observations conducted in Glasgow. The observations took place in a selected area to explore the natural behavior of pedestrians in urban spaces when searching for signs. Random pedestrians were “unobtrusively” followed to investigate their natural pattern behavior when choreographing their travel flow. This study helps to determine the advantages and disadvantages of mobile methods for investigating the relationship between pedestrians, materials and the environment. The interdisciplinary approach developed in this article presents new perspectives on the way mobility and geosemiotics could contribute both theoretically and empirically with new knowledge in design practices.