NEW YORK—Smartphones may be shifting conventional walking patterns by encouraging people to move outside their comfort zones.
“Smartphones facilitate exploration,” said research scientist Andrew Mondschien. “They make it easier to explore, they make people more comfortable in their environments because they don’t feel like they’re going to be lost,” and decrease fear of crime, adding a sense of security.
“We know where we’re going, we know how to get there, we know if we get in trouble we can make a call; they’re very interesting devices and they’re changing the way we relate to cities,” said Mondschien, of New York University’s (NYU) Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, a co-sponsor of a Nov. 16 event titled Concrete State of Mind: How Great Streets Can Make Us Happier and Healthier, at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
“Maybe,” he added. “That’s my theory.”
His newest working paper, “Passeggiata Nuova: Social Travel in the Era of the Smartphone,” draws on observations of social patterns in Italy as well as data analysis from a Chicago-area travel study. Passeggiata is the tradition of residents taking evening strolls that evoke exchanged pleasantries, gossip, and news, says the paper’s abstract.
The impact of information technology, including smartphones, on people’s walking patterns is also displayed.
“Anecdotally, you can talk to anybody and they can give you a story about how they rely on their GPS or their cellphone now to tell them where to go,” said Mondschien. “The bad part is they’ve almost forgotten how to remember what’s inside their heads because they rely on the phones so much.”
