Sidewalk is a city hybrid between busy and vacant.
Sidewalk is an everyday spaces, in a large city like Shenzhen, the sidewalk of CBD area. Undoubtedly,very busy, like millions people may walk on that sidewalk in a day. The filming section will focus on how the surrounding of sidewalk looks like also the activity of the people on the sidewalk.
As Gao, L., Ji, Y., Yan, X. (2021) mentioned [1]“shared-bike systems in China has brought convenience for users, as well as great pressure on bicycle parking management.” Which reflects that many sidewalks in the city had literally been the parking lot of bicycles, even with the regulations of parking area, the overwhelming bicycles still occupied many spaces of sidewalk. However, private bicycles also in the “parking lot”. Which represents the sidewalk could carrying both public and private properties.
Gary(2020) mentioned[2] “Consumer pickup and door‐to‐door delivery services have become increasingly important in the last leg of food delivery. Each of these forms of transport has been impacted differently by the measures related to the COVID‐19 pandemic.” As the matter of fact, since most of office buildings carry on the regulation which only allow the employees pass the gate. In order to keep the gateway clear, the deliverymen have to wait for their customers at the Sidewalk. So the sidewalks in CBD area in the lunch hour are crowded by countless electrical motorcycles also the people in blue or yellow uniforms.
However, after the lunch peak, [3]most of the deliverymen will take this time to maintain their motorbike. So the sidewalks would be clear during the time between lunch and dinner. The office employees also need to back to work, so at that duration, less people may on the sidewalks.
The documentation was processed on the sidewalks around the main building of PAIFC (平安金融中心). Which is the second tallest building of Asia and it represents the CBD area of Shenzhen.
The filming was begun at around 11:00 am, which is exactly the lunch time begins. The hypothesis proved by the scene of gateway of the PAIFC building, which was crowded by deliverymen. This scene may not appear at the time before COVID-19, as there was no limitation of deliverymen into the building to avoid social contect.
Around 1:00pm, the sidewalk of office building was clear, only a few people on the sidewalks. At the time of 2:00pm, the sidewalk of CBD area can be described as vacant since the sidewalk is wide and not much of people walking on it. The shoppers number declined, and this situation may due to the impact of COVID-19, which lower people willingness to go out.
After the documentation and research, sidewalk reflects its characteristics about hybrid between busy and vacant is clearly. And the COVID-19 strengthened this characteristic by making the sidewalk busier than before and emptier than before.
Reference
[1]Gao, Liangpeng, Yanjie Ji, Xingchen Yan, Yao Fan, and Weihong Guo. “Incentive measures to avoid the illegal parking of dockless shared bikes: the relationships among incentive forms, intensity and policy compliance.” Transportation (2020): 1-28.
[2]Gray, Richard S. “Agriculture, transportation, and the COVID‐19 crisis.” Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d’agroeconomie 68, no. 2 (2020): 239-243.
[3]Wu, Philip, and Yingqin Zheng. “Time is of the Essence: Spatiotemporalities of Food Delivery Platform Work in China.” In ECIS. 2020.
ZHANG Zheng, 3035807653
Your interpretation of hybrid as mixtures of private & public, vacant & busy is very informative and intriguing. I see that you mainly focus on describing vacant & busy, emphasizing that delivery service creates the peak and trough of pedestrians concentration on side-walks. Based on your construction, the shooting time is taken just on the peak and trough time, and that’s the point I appreciate a lot.
There is one point I could hope to see in your future work— whether could we find a pair of opposite characteristics that exist at the same time on side-walks. For instance, in the topic, I research, overhead bridges in the pandemic could have both public requirements and personal demands be satisfied at the same time. I wonder whether it could also be possible for sidewalks.
I really enjoy viewing your video, and hope you could consider my question!
You did a good job in documenting the sidewalk area of PAIFC with good quality, sharp, and very stable footages. The contents were well organised, too. In addition, you were also quite focused and made sure that your video essay was informative. I would suggest taking the written essay as an opportunity to expand and extend the arguments you have posed through your video. For example, you can use the text to reflect upon the research process that you have gone through. What discoveries surprised you the most during your time filming? What had you discovered through your investigation? What were the questions/inquiries that had led you throughout the whole research processes?
As a side note, out of curiosity, as your subject matter is in China, were there any particular reasons that you cited a journal on Canada for your references?