Transactional space - rethinking walkability in lively and liveable city debates

Liveliness, liveability, and walkability are interrelated concepts across several bodies oi ltterature. Drawing from Dewey's transactional philosophy and Bridge's argument for transactional space, in this paper we work with ideas about spatial quality and spatial justice to better understand the felt and affective dimensions of habitual urban walking routines. These theoretical labours on our part are grounded in analyses of walking sensory ethnographies conducted in 2015 in Wollongong, a large regional centre 85 kilometres (53 miles) south of the Sydney General Posts Office in New South Wales, Australia. We worked with twenty-five adults who shared with us their routine weekly walks in tile city centre. Our discussions with them about those journeys between different places offer wider insights into how qualttative transactional experiences and situated sense-making wort< for or against walkability. Moving beyond quantified indexes of liveability and walkability, we argue that the idea of transactional space has a role to play in discussions about lively and liveable cities. Our contention is that this idea offers a way to understand walkability as emplaced, corporeal, ongoing, and relational, and as constituted in encounters between non-human bodies and walking human bodies.