PASSING MOMENTS - SOME SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF PEDESTRIAN INTERACTION

Pedestrian interaction is inherently complex yet observably ordered. F or order to be possible, people must behave like competent pedestrians and must expect copresent others to act accordingly. Although many re searchers have examined pedestrian behavior, few have considered exact ly how pedestrians develop and sustain the expectation that others wil l indeed behave like competent pedestrians. Using ethnographic data, t he author shows how these expectations emerge in the specific practice s that comprise pedestrian behavior. Various researchers have attribut ed pedestrian order to the existence of a tacit contract between users of public space. The author's findings extend the implications of thi s work by explicating the social and collaborative processes by which users of public space come to trust each other to act like competent p edestrians.