Walking Methodologies

This article introduces the reader to the range of methods, practices, and applications of walking methodologies. Walking methodologies are a form of qualitative research undertaken “on-the-move” and in situ, focused on the practice of locomotion to generate richer, more holistic understandings of the relationships between people and their lived environments. This article briefly describes the origins of walking in human geography before moving to outline some of the major applications and the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. After surveying the burgeoning, diversifying range of disciplinary subfields currently influenced by walking methodologies, this article closes by suggesting that there are types of insights, perceptions, and data that are better accessed moving together, on foot or with mobility aids, through our lived and natural environments.