The atmospheres of walkability

This panel will discuss the relationship between sensory experience and walkability in urban spaces through Streets Explored, a master’s thesis project funded by SSHRC. This project documents walks undertaken by participants in Montreal using GPS-tagged video and binaural audio. These recordings are used to conduct immersive interviews, in which footage is replayed as participants are interviewed about their sensory experiences and challenges while walking in the city. This semi-structured interview format allows participants to identify significant events and details that contribute to the walkability of a given route. Through the lens of sensory ethnography and critical phenomenology 2.0, panelists will explore participants' perspectives to highlight the diverse challenges pedestrians face in urban environments. The reflections gathered from participant interviews will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of walkability, advancing the broader conversation on accessible and sustainable urban design.

About the panelists

Florian Grond is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, a media artist, and sonic interaction designer. His research interests are participatory design in the context of disability, the arts, immersive media, and assistive technology. He has published in the fields of sound studies, auditory display, assistive technology design,immersive sound recording, sonic ethnographies and art and disability. He has been an independent media artist for many years, exhibiting his works at several venues (Europe, North America, and Japan). When connecting design and disability, he draws from his creative practice as an artist and technologist.Over the last years, he has started collaborations with colleagues with disabilities from academia and the arts, resulting in research output, artistic creations, and exhibition curating.  

Melissa Parks is an Associate Professor in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, a core member of Participatory Research at McGill and full member of Centre de recerche interdisciplinaire en réadaptation du Montréal métropolitain. As an occupational therapist with a background in History of Art, Occupational Science, and Medical Anthropology, she has extensive clinical, research and pedagogical experience using the terms of humanities and rehabilitation to understand healing, transformative and relational processes at dyadic, systemic and sociocultural levels from first-person or experience-near perspectives using narrative-phenomenological and aesthetic conceptual frameworks. Her funded ethnographic and participatory research has focused on understanding and working with multiple stakeholders in mental health related issues, including persons with invisible disabilities, family members, health and social care professionals, policy makers and citizens on topics ranging from “healing” encounters and policy implementation to issues of neurodiversity, equity and justice.

Emily Bain is a designer, artist, and researcher at Concordia University. Her current research investigates how sensory experiences influence accessibility in the built environment, with a focus on how sensory information shapes our perception of space. br.mobilenav Emily combines participatory research, mapping, and web technologies to explore representations of space and subjective human experience.