Increasing active school travel (AST) among children may provide the required level of daily physical activity and reduce the prevalence of obesity. Despite efforts to promote this mode, recent evidence shows that AST rates continue to decrease in suburban and urban areas alike. The aim of this research study, therefore, is to facilitate our understanding of how objective and perceived factors near the home influence children’s AST in an understudied city, İstanbul, Turkey. Using data from a cross-sectional sample of students aged 12–14 from 20 elementary schools (n = 1802) and consenting parents (n = 843), we applied a nominal logistic regression model to highlight important predictors of AST. The findings showed that street network connectivity (as measured by two novel space syntax measures, metric reach and directional reach) was the main deciding factor for active commuting to school, while parents’ perceptions of condition of sidewalks and shade-casting street trees were moderately significant factors associated with AST. Overall, this study demonstrated the significance of spatial structure of street network around the homes in the potential for encouraging AST, and more importantly, the need to consider objective and perceived environmental attributes when strategizing means to increase this mode choice and reduce ill-health among children.

The extensive use of smartphones in our everyday lives has created new modes of appropriation and behavior in public spaces. Recognition of these are essential for urban design and planning practices which help us to improve the relationship between humans, technologies, and urban environment. This study aims to research smartphone users in public space by observing their altering visual attention and walking behavior, and, in this way, to reveal the emergent “new figures”. For this purpose, Korenmarkt square in Ghent, Belgium, was observed for seven days in 10-min time intervals. The gaze and walking behavior of smartphone users were encoded as geo-located and temporal data, analyzed and mapped using statistical and spatial analysis methods. Developing and implementing new methods for identifying the characteristics of smartphone users, this study resulted in a nuanced characterization of novel spatial appropriations. The findings led to a better understanding and knowledge of the different behavior patterns of emergent figures such as “post-flâneurs” and “smartphone zombies” while uncovering their altering visual interactions with and movements in the public space. The results evoked questions on how researchers and designers can make use of spatial analysis methods and rethink the public space of the future as a hybrid construct integrating the virtual and the physical.

In the last decade, the advances in mobile technologies and location-based applications reshaped our mutual relationship with the urban environment. These technologies, as both a mean and barrier to the engagement between humans and their environment, have transformed the urban experience in profound ways. Urban experience is a relatively new concept introduced with the rise of modern cities in the nineteenth century. Its loss due to the rapid urbanization has been a subject of debate since then. Among the discussions that take place in this debate, the figure of ‘flâneur’ plays an extensive role. The flâneur is a figure who wanders through and appropriates the metropolitan city in pursuit of urban experience and reaps aesthetic meaning from the spectacle of the teeming crowds. Flânerie, or the act of wandering, and its implications for our understanding of urban life have been profound. Today, mobile technologies create a new kind of urban wanderer which is described as “post-flâneur”. In this paper, by examining the altering concept of flânerie, we discuss the effects of mobile technologies on urban experience. Based on an informed study of a wide range of theories, we make reflections on the impact of mobile devices on the mutual relationship between humans and their environment, introduce key concepts for understanding the emergent phenomenon of post-flânerie and elaborate on its interconnections with the phenomena of cyber and hybrid-flânerie.

Smartphones have become an ordinary accompanier of our walks and creatednew modes of appropriation of public space. This study aims to research thesemodes by observing the altering visual attention and walking behavior of peopleusing smartphones in public space, and in this way, to reveal the emergence ofdifferent types of post-flâneurs. In order to address these aims, 346 (195 females,151 males) smartphone users were observed in a central public square in Ghent,Belgium for seven days in 10-minute time intervals. Each person's gender, age,number of accompanies and their dominant mode of smartphone usage(s) wereidentified. Afterward, each person's walking timeline was organized into secondsand coded according to their focus of visual attention in 24 different modes whichgrouped under the three gaze types; visual attention on the environment, on theenvironment through the smartphone screen, and on the smartphone screen.Results of the descriptive statistics, multivariate graph, and rhythm-basedin-depth analysis show that different types of smartphone activities affect visualattention and speed differently. Different types of post-flâneurs such asnavigators and photo takers were identified based upon their high percentage ofvisual attention on the environment and slower walking speed. The study alsorevealed the frequent presence of phone-walkers (who walk while only holdingthe smartphone) and smartphone zombies (who walk slowly and without attentionto their surrounding) in public space. In addition to these, our research revealedrapid smartphone zombies who walk faster than the average walking speed, afinding contrary to the former studies reviewed.