Pavement publics in late nineteenth-century Stockholm

Abstract

This article presents a case study of pavement regulation and usage in nineteenth-century Stockholm, probing how urbanites’ interactions on and access to pavements were contested and negotiated, in the process shaping the publicness of streets. Utilising press coverage, it moves beyond a focus on infrastructure and political discourse, to capture urban dwellers’ perspectives, claims and interactions. The article shows that, in favouring circulation, Stockholm's pavement regulations expelled or made subsistence-driven activities illegitimate. Pavement circulation also secured undisturbed, anonymous walking and the ability to maintain a distanced attitude towards others – to be private while in public. Yet pavements featured as a prominent public space not only because it was ordered and controlled, but because urbanites of all sorts fought for access. Next to allegedly “modern” usages, city pavements remained home to age-old but marginalised street practices, as well as middle-class women who had begun to claim their equal right of use.