Modest Contemplations in the Public Sphere of Walking and Eating
Date
2018-05
Authors
Awoniyi, Stephen A.
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Volume Title
Publisher
Verlag der Technischen Universitat Graz
Abstract
The street is one of the key spaces of public and private life. For its central role in making of modern life and contributing to the quality of social and personal life, it is a space worth probing in its multiple spheres of being and usage. We explore a nexus of human experience – where walking, eating, pleasure, social interaction, and more converge. In this particular case, we examine eating and walking and speculate on social facilitation: effect of social interaction on shift of state from noneater to eater while walking in the street. We take parameters from a survey and execute an agent-based model. In the survey, participants had scored ten theoretical factors as instigators of eating while walking in the street. In the current paper, we compare results with an earlier design which employed means of factors to define center of distribution for random-normal assignment of factor scores. In the current iteration, we use multiple regression to estimate a center, reasoning that factors tend to work in consonance with one another. Our model suggests chance of social facilitation. Any aspect of human behavior in the city that is known or understood facilitates programming the context in which the behavior happens. Those who design or manage urban settings either ground or supplement their versatility through encounter with a broad range of insights which inform urban space. Modelling provides one such consequential pathway to apprehension. Using the computer as a modelling tool facilitates managing the problem of anticipation of social action in space
Description
Keywords
social interaction, public spaces, streets, walking, eating, Health and Human Performance
Citation
Awoniyi, S. A. (2018). Modest contemplations in the public sphere of walking and eating. In G. Getzinger & S. Egger (Eds.), Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies: Conference proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz (pp. 196-208). Austria: Verlag der Technischen Universitat Graz.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.