ABSTRACT
Italians have engaged in the tradition of the “passeggiata” for centuries. In villages and neigh-bourhoods, residents come out each evening to stroll. On these strolls, they see and are seen, and they exchange pleasantries, gossip and news. During the passeggiata, social ties are reinforced and the link between place and community is deepened (Del Negro 2004). Similar traditions of social travel exist throughout the world, but the essentiality of the passeggiata to the life of an Italian community is exceptional. In part, what makes the passeggiata work is the relatively small scale of Italian villages and neighbourhoods. An entire community can be seen and heard during a night’s walk. In contemporary large cities, a significant proportion of daily travel is accomplished by car or transit (train/subway), and social ties can be scattered across cities. Teens may cruise and neighbours may chat across the fence, but a true citywide passeggiata would be an impossibility. Still, does the passeggiata persist, inasmuch as we can observe a pedestrianized social life in major cities? Furthermore, what role, if any, might new technologies of communication and mobility play in socially oriented walking?
