Citywalk: Walking, Perception, and Digital Visibility in Urban Spaces

By Haiyun Xu

Citywalk examines how digital platforms are reshaping one of the most ordinary urban practices, walking, and in doing so reconfiguring the production of public space. In the algorithmic city, streets are valued not only for mobility, safety, and comfort, but also for their capacity to be photographed, narrated, and circulated. Integrating platform urbanism with classic theories of perception and public life, the book conceptualises Citywalk as a hybrid practice, simultaneously embodied and digitally mediated, private in motivation yet public in representation. Methodologically, the book develops two complementary evidence chains. The first captures lived experience through participatory mapping (PPGIS) of walking routes and perceived landscape values, linking behavioural patterns to environmental attributes and social differentiation. The second traces platform visibility through social media geotags, pedestrian-view street video coding, and statistical modelling, explaining why some streets become "internet-famous" and how micro-scale spatial cues are translated into visibility value. By moving beyond traditional walkability, Citywalk introduces "scrollability" as a platform-mediated extension of urban experience. It demonstrates how visibility loops can concentrate flows, reshape local economies, and reproduce inequalities in who is seen, who feels safe, and who benefits. The book concludes with planning and design implications for building street networks that support everyday wellbeing while mitigating the externalities of platform-amplified urban life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9999342825
• ISBN13: 9789999342827
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Eliva Press
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"