Sounding Sidewalks: Historicizing and Theorizing This Medial Zone

Abstract

Sidewalks have long been a contested urban space existing between the private and public, thereby embodying conflicting sonic worlds of personal soundscaping, cultural world-building, and authority. This article theorizes and historicizes the lineage of the sidewalk as a medium of both control and resistance, addressed through an analysis of various sound technologies and techniques. Extending literature on the complex history of sidewalks as urban infrastructure, this article furthers scholarship by exploring the sounds of evolving social and political relations, the sonic environments imbued in this medial zone, and the shifting sound marks that accompany evolving urban policies.

Introduction

Offering a path for an individual to move beyond the bordered walls of a private home to a space of public gathering, the sidewalk acts as a universally understood transitionary space, resonating as a sound stage for life unfolding. While the historical purpose of this infrastructure has largely been to direct safe and controlled pedestrian movement, ¹ the soundings that emerge from various sonic communities within this space develop new identities and shift the use of this infrastructure through negotiations with public policy, urban design, cultural practice, methods of control, and sonic resistance. To clarify, I utilize the verb sounding purposely throughout this article. As the article traverses a history of sidewalks, the analysis focuses on both the sounds embedded in the legacy of urban infrastructure and the communities whose relations and actions emit these soundings. For many, the sidewalk has embodied something more than simply a medial zone—or a space in-between—and this contested relationship can be best explored through a historical accounting of its sonic properties.

Jane Jacobs once suggested that sidewalks embody “the main public places of the city . . . [and further denote] its most vital organs.” ² As a result, she remarks that there are numerous unwritten rules embedded in the cultural practices of interacting with this infrastructure in urban life. To confidently traverse the sidewalk is to understand and utilize the techniques, tools, and policies central to how individuals are expected to interact with each other in this space: to keep to one side when passing another, to pause at intersections with lighted markers, to engage in an informal public life, among others. Yet, a history of this medium illuminates the ways in which the sidewalk was utilized for more than the wandering pedestrian, by becoming a “commercial terrain for merchants and vendors, a place of leisure for flâneurs, a refuge for homeless residents, a place for day-to-day survival for panhandlers, a space for debate and protest for political activists, an urban forest for environmentalists.” ³ It has become a site to “bring together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion,” ⁴ to mediate relationships and dialogue through its function as a public square.

While much research has been conducted on this form of urban organization and the role of the sidewalk across the cultural development of cities, I suggest that the sonic dimensions of this space in the context of contested historical usage require further exploration. In existing sonic literature, Brandon Labelle’s research considers the role of footsteps and rhythmic encounters; “The sidewalk is a threshold between an interior and an exterior, between different sets of rhythms that come to orchestrate the dynamic passing of exchange each individual body instigates and remains susceptible to.” ⁵ For Labelle, footsteps echo within this medium marking this space of movement and energetic relations between the personal and public. Similarly, R. Murray Schafer has addressed the sidewalk through historical soundscape analysis, calling special attention to Vancouver’s material construction during 1860-1900, a time during which all sidewalks were built with wooden planks, reverberating hollow footsteps throughout an environment. ⁶ Across these few examples, acoustic territories stretch and shift as the sidewalk evolves historically, embodying personal, public, and urban relations all at once. To expand on these sonic explorations of the sidewalk in conversation with historical and theoretical analysis of urban development, this article provides a brief historical exploration of the sidewalk as medium. The article is further expanded through a sonic lens by considering the media technologies and techniques that have contributed to the contested relationship of this site as both a place of urban control developed through militarized techniques and a site of resistance amplified through sound marks of cultural revolution.

Theorizing the Sidewalk as Medium

For the sidewalk to be a space of mobility and transition, and for it to simultaneously be a space of culture and urban management, it must successfully function as a communication medium that integrates various informational technologies, mechanisms, and cultural techniques. Shannon Mattern analyzes the sidewalk through smart cities, exploring its function between public and private suggesting that “liminality is embodied in its distinctive materiality: surfaces and fixtures that separate it from the street, on one side, and the private lawn or commercial facade, on the other.” ⁷ In the case of Mattern’s analysis, the sidewalk has become a platform for data capture, a medium that exists and acts between “individualized actions and aggregated urban flows.” ⁸ Through Mattern’s analysis, the concept of the sidewalk as medium addresses how this liminal zone is constructed between individual, public, private, and governmental interests.

Offering another grounding for theoretical analysis, John Durham Peters describes that a “medium has always meant an element, environment, or vehicle in the middle of things.” ⁹ Considering the sidewalk as medium is to identify its position as the medial—an object situated in the middle—in which this space exists between personal and public, between one’s private residence and public city, between one’s work and homestead. To extrapolate further on this analysis, Peters suggests that media and mediums are more than carriers of messages but are the infrastructures that combine nature and culture that encourage fruitful human life. He states,

Infrastructures can be defined as “large, force-amplifying systems that connect people and institutions across large scales of space and time” or “big, durable, well-functioning systems and services.” Often, they are backed by states or public-private partnerships that alone possess the capital, legal, or political force and megalomania to push them through. ¹⁰

Thus, sidewalks are maintained as a communication medium through this intended use as a medial zone to incite movement; however, as this article will explore, it has also become a medium through its ability to enable resistance and encourage cultural formation when utilized under new conditions and opened to new realities by communities. It is through the work of Peters and Mattern that this article can expand on theoretical and historical positioning to better trace sonic technologies, logics, and policies that have made this medial zone a place of social and political force in conflict.

Sidewalk Histories

The sidewalk can be traced to “the karum of Kultepe (about 2000-1900 BC)” ¹¹ with the development of marked crossings and designated pedestrian paths that lined both sides of the street. Finding its way to Ancient Rome,

Etruscan Marzabotto had a grid of broad, paved streets, as much as 50 feet (15 m.) wide (the secondary streets averaged 16 feet/4.9 m.), equally divided between the carriageway and a pair of raised pavements. The Roman word for sidewalk was semita, and references to this feature go back to the 3rd century BC. ¹²

Early semitas became a way to connect pedestrians of the city to its center, controlling the flow and direction of movement while effectively altering the scale of urban development by redefining personal expectations as to how one would engage in their public sphere on foot. For example, “the side-walk’s narrow and utilitarian location fosters more intimate and regular interactions in public. In other words, the public space’s physical qualities shape the kinds of political speech our bodies utter,” ¹³ encouraging public communication and intimate relations to emerge within proximity.

However, as Rome fell, so too did the sidewalks, once again forcing pedestrians to mingle with carts, horses, and wagons on local roads. For a large portion of time, this infrastructure had disappeared from urban management. A historically marked example of its resurgence followed London’s great fire of 1666, ¹⁴ during which time the rebuilding of the city allowed for an infrastructural redesign and the development of sidewalks once again. Through the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, sidewalks were re-constructed across major European cities, finding popularity in North America in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

People, goods, and vehicles crowded the American streets and sidewalks, and with growth came an increasingly professionalized municipal government, municipal improvements, and public-space controls. As municipalities began to provide sidewalks, they exerted increasing control over how they were used. And one use, walking for transportation, became the primary purpose for which the sidewalks were constructed. The pedestrian’s unobstructed mobility became the justification that underlay other activity restrictions, and the pedestrian became the public for whom the sidewalks were being provided. The assumption that walking is the primary use for sidewalks has carried into the twenty-first century. ¹⁵

As automobiles and paved roads became the norm, the sidewalk became a sound stage for various communal uses: children used it as a site of play, shopkeepers to display goods, public orators could preach about politics or religion, and the houseless might find temporary shelter. Yet, with these changing sidewalks of the nineteenth century, city officials in North America began to view its numerous uses as a problem to sidewalk infrastructure, disrupting their primary purpose for movement. As early as 1882 in Los Angeles, ¹⁶ the emergence of new legislation marked a shifting point in sidewalk management and the death of certain sonic communities. It was during these decades in America that the goal of unobstructed circulation was defined as the sidewalk’s primary use. As a result,

the city adopted ordinances restricting sidewalk use, and the owners or tenants of abutting commercial establishments saw their claims over sidewalks weaken. Orderly and free-flowing movement on the sidewalk suited the interests of the large merchants and department store owners as well. ¹⁷

In the twenty-first century, claims over sidewalk use and public policy continue to be negotiated. Particularly in the city of Toronto, the location in which I write this article, sidewalk policing has seen a resurgence to remove houseless communities from their encampments. One of the most recent forceful removals occurred during the summer of 2022 with mass eviction of houseless camps across local parks and their bordering sidewalks. ¹⁸ For those protesting such forceful removals while simultaneously advocating for the rights of houseless individuals, the politics of the sidewalk became a point of debate. One activist present at these evictions recalls,

I pointed out to a group of hot dog vendors and city officials that, in law, sidewalks are the most public spaces in cities, which is why pickets and demonstrations need not get a permit if they stay on the sidewalk. A bylaw officer replied: “Sidewalks are not public; they are the private property of the municipal corporation.” ¹⁹

In the case of the varied use of sidewalks and contested understanding of this site as both a private and public medium, it is worth questioning how these tensions create dialogue and action that might contradict the First Amendment ²⁰ or, in a Canadian context, Section 2 of Canada’s “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” ²¹ in which everyone has the fundamental freedom of peaceful assembly and free speech. While this article will not delve further into the politics of access and the rights of those who are unhoused, this contested social issue offers another perspective as to urban forms of control through infrastructural organization. Nonetheless, across the centuries of evolution, sidewalks have continued to act as a medium of interaction, encounter, culture, unity, and separation. This article will expand on these histories to theorize and historicize the varied relation of acoustic territories, techniques, and sonic technologies employed to control or contest the sidewalks as private or public. What follows is a thematically separated analysis of the sidewalk as medium through a sonic lens: (1) historicizing the space as a site of urban control and militarized techniques through an analysis of classical music, the Mosquito anti-loitering machine, and the long-range acoustic device (LRAD); (2) historicizing this space as a cultural site of sonic world-building and resistance through an analysis of busking, public characters, collective action, and sidewalk markets.

Sidewalk Soundscapes—Urban Control

Having briefly explored the history of the sidewalk as medium, it is evident that this medial zone was designed as infrastructure to control how pedestrians interact with the city by encouraging those walking to confine their steps to the (now often) concretized pathways. As it follows, the sonic dimensions of the sidewalk created through these forms of government interest mirror preferences to enact control over individuals utilizing such space. In one sense, a Kittlerian perspective on this sonic relationship might be used to draw attention to the immaterial war waged by media techniques and information technologies against an individual’s mind and body. ²² As sound leaves no visible trace, an individual can be forcefully removed from this public environment, yet no lingering marks of such forceful removal remain. In this context, the work of Paul Virillio could be used to consider how information networks and military techniques might be deployed against one’s own population: endocolonization. ²³ As government organizations reimagine sonic tools and techniques with embedded roots in military operations, it can be suggested that they enact a form of endocolonization by controlling pedestrian populations through similar militaristic processes. This section will explore three sonic media technologies and techniques that enable government sectors or private corporations to control the sidewalk as medium—music, the Mosquito anti-loitering machine, and the LRAD—while carefully curating the soundscape of this public space.

Music as Control

The weaponization of music has a long and rich history tied to military techniques. In its earliest forms, “when Richard I arrived in Sicily to join the crusades, his resounding trumpets and loud horns struck fear and dread into the souls of the citizens.” ²⁴ One might also be reminded of the infamous use of loud music in Guantanamo Bay during which inmates were subjected to excessively loud and repetitive rap or heavy metal music, ²⁵ playing for weeks on end as a form of militaristic torture. These examples of musical weaponry have emerged from the conceptualization of us versus them or nation versus nation; however, over the past few centuries, music as a form of population control has transitioned from the battlefield or prison centers to the streets of populated cities.

Situating this analysis in North America, classical music has been used in strategic and targeted ways to deter certain groups of individuals from congregating in public spaces particularly over the last thirty years. Lily Hirsch describes the beginnings of weaponized classical music in Canada, noting its uses in a convenience store chain:

A number of 7-Eleven stores in British Columbia, Canada, were experiencing a loitering problem in 1985. It was not a problem confined to 7-Eleven, but more of a concern throughout the community. Our 7-Eleven management team there met with store personnel and psychologists to explore ways to deal with the issue of loitering. Several good ideas came out of these brainstorming session[s] that, when combined, produced a successful program to reduce the incidence of teen loitering. One of the ideas was to play “easy listening” or classical music in the parking lot. The thinking was that this kind of music is not popular with teens and may discourage them from “hanging out” at the store. ²⁶

Marking one early example of this sonic tool in Canadian urban settings, 7-Eleven is often cited as the first North American chain to deploy classical music to reclaim control of the sidewalks that bordered their stores. Acting as what Jonathan Sterne describes as a non-aggressive music deterrent ²⁷ in that the music selection is not meant to cause hostility, classical music is chosen to force a certain population to dissipate “ostensibly because the Muzak renders the space inhospitable to them.” ²⁸ One reporter who provided a written account of neighborhood responses following the use of classical music outside these stores stated that most residents had noticed significant changes to the use of the sidewalk as there were fewer loiterers and more room to travel. ²⁹ While this sonic media technique encouraged the sidewalk to maintain its state as a space of movement, harkening back to the development of city ordinances and sidewalk use in the late 1800s, it is important to note the classist undertones that contribute to the marking of certain populations as worthy of utilizing the sidewalk and the use of classical music as a deterrent. Marie Thompson likens this to a form of urban revanchism, to effectively police the “boundaries of public spaces, guarding against unwanted and ‘threatening’ populations” ³⁰ most of whom are assumed to belong to a specific population that does not listen to classical music. She suggests that the choice to deploy mainly classical music performs two functions in this context: to soothe those who are believed to be exhibiting undesirable behavior, and to deter others by inhibiting those in this public space from gathering. ³¹

Having evolved over the past thirty years in North America, the sonic warfare of music as weaponized control continues to find use in various settings, shifting in music choice and desired outcome with each location. For example, one luxury waterfront pavilion in West Palm Beach, Florida, 2019, began playing “Baby Shark,” a viral children’s song released on YouTube in 2016 by South Korean company Pinkfong. “Baby Shark” has been widely cited as being one of the most annoying songs of that year for its catchy “nursery rhyme-like song and video.” ³² In West Palm Beach, the song was played on a loop throughout the evening to deter the houseless from resting on the pavilions nearby sidewalks. ³³ Effectively, music remains a hostile architectural media technique employed to control the use of the sidewalk as a public space, to reinvent the soundscape of the sidewalk to encourage movement, and to extend capitalistic notions as a border to private markets.

The “Mosquito” Anti-Loitering Machine

In a similar outlet of hostility and control, the “Mosquito” anti-loitering machine has become a sonic media technology designed to deter mainly younger crowds from gathering within specific public areas. Created by the British Company Compound Security Systems, and patented in 2005, ³⁴ the Mosquito anti-loitering machine emits high frequencies (in the range of 18-20 kHz) most often heard only by individuals aged 25 or younger. Described by a Mosquito reseller (www.mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com), these frequencies are not meant to cause harm, but rather are meant to be highly annoying and difficult to ignore that youth in the area will want to congregate in another location. ³⁵ In essence, this media technology works in collaboration with age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis (a condition affecting most individuals by causing a decreased ability to hear higher frequencies), to utilize this process as a natural sonic filtering mechanism. As a result, the tool is inaudible for many, meaning its sonic disruptions are invisible to a large portion of the population. As stated on the Mosquito loitering solution website (www.mosquitoloiteringsolutions.com), their vision for this media device is to give communities respite in cases of youth nuisance ³⁶ ; however, this website and related resellers fail to address the definition of anti-social behavior and to consider the harm caused to youth populations due to the Mosquito’s far-reaching properties and lack of sonic barriers.

According to a 2019 report from Philadelphia, thirty parks and recreation centers have been outfitted with these devices set to ring all night ³⁷ ; Vancouver’s Robson Street has utilized the Mosquito outside of local parking garages ³⁸ ; Australia’s Sydney State Rail has utilized these devices in what they call graffiti hot spots to deter young people from vandalizing these spaces. ³⁹ Across all applications and various countries, the intentions of this device remain similar: to control the movement and presence of youth populations in shared public space. As a result of this intention, the politics of this media device have come under scrutiny. In 2008, “the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child asked the United Kingdom to reconsider its use, as it may violate children’s right to free movement and peaceful assembly.” ⁴⁰ To cite their consideration of reports submitted:

The Committee recommends that the State party reconsider the ASBOs as well as other measures such as the mosquito devices insofar as they may violate the rights of children to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, the enjoyment of which is essential for the children’s development and may only subject to very limited restrictions as enshrined in article 15 of the Convention. ⁴¹

They suggest that the Mosquito anti-loitering device is at its core a tool that infringes on the rights of children and young adults, limiting their access to the same public spaces and sidewalks as their older counterparts. Across its various locations and uses, the device has faced critique from news outlets, ⁴² petitions from public groups on Facebook, ⁴³ and, in some cases, a local or national ban. ⁴⁴ While their website notes that research has been done on the safety of the mosquito, much of which has concluded there are no long-term health effects or hearing damage, rather only mild discomfort at the time of hearing, ⁴⁵ this analysis disregards the issue of unpleasant subjective experiences, the variety of sonic sensitivities in youth, and the political roots of such a tool designed to deter youth through this form of discomfort. As Mitchell Akiyama describes, “pain is subjective and is not simply reducible to lasting physical damage. And such assessments evade what is most damaging and problematic: the tension and hostility between social groups that the Mosquito reinforces or even causes.” ⁴⁶ The Mosquito is not unique in its processes but is rather one of many sonic tools and techniques employed by public sectors to negotiate the acoustic territory of the sidewalk as a public space for only certain individuals.

Long-Range Acoustic Device

Another sonic technology employed for the control of sidewalk use is the LRAD. Designed in response to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, ⁴⁷ the LRAD was developed and aptly titled to be an acoustic hailing device designed to broadcast voice communication and warning tones over a large distance for naval forces. Most LRAD devices come equipped with a few settings: broadcasting voice communication and a series of alert tones. ⁴⁸ With success in the navy, the LRAD was added to the toolkit of numerous regional police forces, now prevalent in over 100 countries and 500 U.S. cities for use in “public safety, law enforcement, defense, border security, infrastructure, fire rescue, emergency management, wildlife control and maritime security.” ⁴⁹

Tracing its history as a tool of control in urban environments and sidewalk management, the LRAD was first used for crowd control in North America during the 2009 G20 summit in Pittsburgh. ⁵⁰ Used on the acoustic signaling setting, the device cleared protestors from the streets of Pittsburgh, becoming a sound cannon in its first public setting outside of military use. Although this initial use was met with various frustrations, the LRAD has been deployed in a variety of settings and international uses as forceful crowd control. ⁵¹ The issues that emerge with the use of such technology are its lack of focus and the potential for invisible harm. On its acoustic signaling setting, the sound cannon emits a frequency anywhere from 137 to 162 dBA when measured 3 ft from the device. ⁵² Measuring the decibels on an acoustic scale, you can liken this range to the sound of a jet taking off at a similar distance, a loudness that can cause permanent hearing damage with only brief exposure. ⁵³ The invisibility of this harmful weaponization of sound mirrors that of the heat ray which was historically concluded to be “one of the least physically intrusive crowd control and security technologies and that, within established limits, enacted no physiological harm on its targets—merely a sensation of harm, a sensation of heat.” ⁵⁴ This perspective on invisible weaponry within a city obfuscates the impact and invisible traces that may permanently harm those within its range. To cite an example, Karen Piper was a bystander during the 2009 G20 summit in Pittsburgh, working as a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon. ⁵⁵ She was aiming to observe the protests from a distance as research for her upcoming book on globalization.

Piper walked on the sidewalk a short distance from the marching protesters, in the company of other curiosity seekers and journalists. When Piper became concerned about rapidly increasing police activity, she tried to leave the area. As she was walking away, police officers activated, suddenly and without warning, an LRAD a short distance away from her. It emitted a continuous piercing sound lasting several minutes. Piper immediately suffered intense pain as mucus discharged from her ears. She became nauseous and dizzy and developed a severe headache. Since then, Piper has suffered from tinnitus (ringing of the ears), barotrauma, left ear pain and fluid drainage, dizziness, and nausea. She still suffers from permanent nerve damage. ⁵⁶

Piper ultimately won her legal battle against the Pittsburgh Police Department and was awarded $72,000. ⁵⁷ In 2019, a group of activists reached a $750,000 settlement with the New York City Police Department over a five-year legal battle regarding the use of the LRAD during the protests for Eric Garner in December 2014. ⁵⁸ Across these examples and other international uses, the history of the LRAD as a military tool turned urban sound control demonstrates a dangerous approach to soundscape manipulation and a lack of specificity when employed. The sound cannon is made to cover large swaths of land which implies that sidewalks become a space of military action regardless of this infrastructural division for bystanders and participators alike.

Across all three of these sonic weapons, the sidewalk is positioned as a space for urban control by manipulating specific populations according to what is deemed to be acceptable use of this public space. Through such technologies and techniques as the use of weaponized music, the Mosquito anti-loitering machine, and the LRAD (sound cannon), urban spaces maintain a monopoly of knowledge, allowing a select few populations to congregate in these areas of public and private convergence for intimate relations. Alternatively, as Harold A. Innis ⁵⁹ would suggest, we can further refine our study of media by focusing on these monopolies of knowledge and the potential for marginalized communities to adopt new technologies or techniques to subvert militaristic powers of control. The remainder of this article considers sonic tools and communities employed by populations to resist and reclaim the sidewalk as a space of public dialogue as well as a site of socialization, pleasure, and safety.

Sidewalk Soundscapes—Sonic World-Building and Resistance

The sonic possibilities of cultural world-building and resistance stretch and evolve acoustic territories and their related communities that emerge from, within, and beyond the sidewalk. Analyzing an acoustic community ⁶⁰ illuminates the political, cultural, and social dimensions of place, disseminating vital information and fostering relationships through sonic means. Having briefly explored the history of sonic control through sidewalks, communities have been faced with the challenge of existing in tandem with these sonic tools, forcing many to turn to their personal soundscaping devices, such as noise-canceling devices, ⁶¹ for comfort or finding moments of sonic resistance and community-building techniques. To return to a theoretical underpinning, Innis suggests that colonial power historically could determine the principal strategies or technologies to master and develop social space—visuality versus orality, space versus time. ⁶² Furthermore, Berland suggests this capitalization of space takes on a new form:

rather than setting out to conquer unclaimed or autonomous spaces around the globe, empires begin to expand their domain through the recolonization of already produced spaces by means of the recommodification of services, spaces, bodies, information, everyday life, and work. ⁶³

Publics react and interact with new media within this space allowing us to consider how public identities are “constructed and interpersonal power dynamics are performed, how social hierarchies are negotiated, and how larger urban policies play out at the microscale, in the realm of the everyday.” ⁶⁴ To engage with these techniques and tools that challenge social hierarchies, the remainder of this article will engage in an exploration of three case studies, tracing the historical progression of busking, political speech and public characters, and sidewalk markets as they have toed the line between the private and public interests, offering space for resistance and reclamation of sounding sidewalks.

Street Performers and the Culture of Busking

Street performers have had many names throughout history—troubadour, minstrel, jongleur ⁶⁵ —playing music as entertainment or news delivery. The history of busking is not a defined lineage but its foundational beginnings contain various ties to resistance.

Mostly it is a story of struggle, for society’s attitude towards the itinerant performer has always been ambivalent. The patronage of kings and courtiers brought privileges and honour to a favoured few, but unprotected entertainers were often hounded from town to town, labelled as vagrants. ⁶⁶

Evidence of early busking can be traced to first-century Romans although this history is scarce and is solely identifiable through early mosaics which depict pantomimic actors in the street. ⁶⁷ The tradition of busking evolved through Rome’s political shifts as Caesar himself became the topic of street song. ⁶⁸ Throughout the centuries, busking has evolved alongside the development of the city, utilizing the sidewalk and public squares as sites of performance.

In a Canadian context, busking had a formative emergence in the 1860s’ capital city of Ottawa, ⁶⁹ spreading to other Canadian cities in the early 1900s; however, the history of busking as street performance is peppered with strict laws and prosecution. Notably, the Vagrancy Act was one policy that emerged in 1869 in Toronto, “whereby anyone without a home could be charged with vagrancy and sentenced to a maximum of two months in jail as well as a fine.” ⁷⁰ In essence, this law meant to regulate and govern the houseless as well as any peddlers or performers who were found on the street. While this ban remained in place for decades, along with several other policies restricting public performance, many were later overturned for being unconstitutional. For example, Virginia introduced a ban in 1983 restricting “all street performers from a 61-block public area in the center of the city, a much wider area than the mere two blocks of commercial entities purportedly affected by the ‘intrusions’ of the buskers.” ⁷¹ Following numerous responses and backlash, the ban was deemed to be unconstitutional and was rapidly overturned. That said, as cities evolved and sidewalk policies became stricter, laws were designed to either limit the voice of the busker through noise level restrictions or forbid the action altogether.

Nowadays, busking continues to be a licensed activity in most North American jurisdictions. In the city of Toronto, an individual must meet the minimum age requirement of 18, or 16 if accompanied by a parent, they must submit two pieces of identification as well as a recent photograph, and they must pay a licensing fee of $47.64, which will need to be paid annually for renewal. ⁷² Facing these policy changes and evolving regulations in North America, buskers have been challenged in their craft. Similarly, with the development of mass media, the reconfiguration of cities for automobile transportation, ⁷³ and the advent of musical copyright ⁷⁴ particularly in the 1900s, busking has waned and evolved as street musicians continue to negotiate evolving restrictions and social perceptions.

Regardless of the contested history and this form of sonic negotiation, performers continue to reimagine resistance by performing outside of conventional power structures, thereby creating a space of public dialogue and culture within the medial zones of the city as a performative medium. Their presence offers a unique sonic marker of cultural health and a fruitful site of engagement:

The busker is important, not merely because he brings us music on our way to work, but also because he represents the unpredictability and freedom that have been lost in most people’s regimented lives. The footloose musician has always been around and his different perspective on life can give a fresh point of view to that coming from masses of people all trained to think the same way. He is society’s joker. . .destined to be kicked around by everybody while showing more insight than most. ⁷⁵

Busking offers a social relationship that is not only transactional in its ability for the artist to obtain profits but is one that simultaneously invites community and defines personal relationships as key to its function as a form of spiritual gift-giving. ⁷⁶

Sidewalk Debate and Public Characters

The history of the sidewalk as sonic resistance is also marked by numerous forms of political speech, shared gatherings, and protests. As a cultural medium, “sidewalks transcend their ordinary functions when people ‘take to the streets’ to celebrate, protest, and mourn—either formally or in an impromptu fashion. In these instances, groups come together as a community. A sport team’s victory can instigate joyful celebration.” ⁷⁷ Particularly, within the past few years of ecological crisis and political strife—as conflicting perspectives on COVID protocols dispersed across nations—sidewalks became a site of political tension and public debate. It is in these medial zones where marches, rallies, protests, and blockades meet and interact. Historically, this was a primary function of the sidewalk in its early development, crucial to the evolution of trust through public contact: “The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level . . . is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighbourhood need.” ⁷⁸ Jacobs notes that the importance of maintaining this space as public lies in the ability to develop this unending respect. Within this web of relationships and public debates, the sidewalk hinges on several public characters who contribute to the life of this medium. Jacobs describes a public character as someone interested in making themselves publicly known and “is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people.” ⁷⁹ To consider one example, spiritual or religious speech leaders who take to the streets as preachers become public characters in their specific neighborhoods. Drawing attention to a Toronto-based sound mark, individuals familiar with the intersection of Yonge and Dundas during the 2010s may remember the neighborhood preacher who would daily shout “Believe” to those in passing.

In this realm of public speech and debate, it is also crucial to consider the shared interests through picket lines, marches, and rallies that expand this acoustic territory. In these moments, the sidewalk no longer exists as an extension of government or private control; instead, the individuals participating in political action re-purpose the space as an extension of their cause and, in turn, their homes. To consider this analogy, the Black Lives Matter movement has evolved across many shifting realities and political reactions. One of their most notable sonic cues is tied to the 2015 song “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. The same year of this song’s release, several protesters in Cleveland began chanting the lyrics “We gon’ be alright,” uniting participants in political action and alerting those passing to the root of the mission. ⁸⁰ The song had been influential for many within the community, acting as an anthem for a unified movement. In its use outside of the home, it contributed to the unification of an acoustic community by placing participants in a shared form of vocal call and response. The protests accompanying the Black Lives Matter movement had reshaped the role of sidewalks and streets as a transitionary medium to one of steadfast positioning, reclamation, and collective action.

Collective gathering can also occur in the form of celebrations such as parades and festivals which allow the public to celebrate pride and community within their communal spaces: “Public celebrations, processions, and festivals offer opportunities to display counternarratives. By participating in the rites and symbols of peaceful street parades and festivals, groups insert new ideas into street politics and use public spaces to make their claims.” ⁸¹ In sum, these forms of public characters or collective movement can take shape beyond the sidewalk, claiming the street to demonstrate their refusal of the confines of urban control through public disruption. Regardless, in these moments these chants and other related sonic markers of communal debate and public character reflect off the windows of sky rises and surrounding concrete walls, allowing the message to reverberate and find new sounding. It is these moments that have contributed to the reclamation of the use of the sidewalk, extending into the streets, and reshaping the city in the process.

Farmer’s Markets, Sidewalk Bazaars, and the Disappearance of the Street Vendor

As described in the historical exploration of the sidewalk as medium, the sidewalk was once widely understood to be a public market. Nineteenth-century America was crowded with vendors, pedal carts, laborers, and sidewalk displays. ⁸² Accompanying these professions arose chants of daily sales and bartering, a sonic marker of any public marketplace of the time. Tracing this history in North America, “as early as 1691, the city [of New York] prohibited selling on the streets until two hours after the markets opened, and in 1707, street hawking was forbidden outright. By the late nineteenth-century, vending became ubiquitous.” ⁸³ The early twentieth century saw such a rapid rise in street peddlers and vendors that it became listed as an occupation when collecting census data. ⁸⁴ Yet, as city reform began and sidewalks became seen as a place for unobstructed movement, sidewalk policy led to the loss of related notable sound marks. Spiro Kostof describes in the extension of corporate use,

As shopping activity spills out into the street and restaurants and cafés take up the sidewalks, so the public space infiltrates courtyards where there are workshops we need to do business with or garage space for our motorcars. Street design has worked out a variety of conventions to negotiate this transitional zone. ⁸⁵

One such example of this history of policing vending is the loss of the push cart. The Push-Cart Commission of 1906 in New York City argued that these peddlers and forms of vending were the root of numerous societal problems with regulating the use of the sidewalk: creating congestion, uncleanliness, delaying market deliveries and pedestrian use, causing a fire hazard, and, what the commission deemed to be the most serious concern, the increase in immigrant populations finding vending to be a livelihood. ⁸⁶ Forcing the street vendors to be contained to a specific block radius shifted this sonic marker and resulted in several demonstrations bleeding into the 1920s and 1930s. ⁸⁷

While this sonic marker has become obsolete, the loss of the street vendor can be directly tied to the privatization of food services and a general reliance on these organizations to provide food in the space of a grocery store. ⁸⁸ Individually organized markets and street peddlers have slowed in North American markets, while regulations on this form of cultural production continue to exist. For example, the city of Toronto requires peddlers and push-cart vendors to apply for a license, a process that boasts a hefty application fee of $1,246.36. ⁸⁹ The sounds of bartering, public debate, and street vendors that once filled the streets and defined the sidewalk as acoustic communities have been replaced with privatized goods founded on commercialization and pop music wars, reaching their acoustic signals beyond their walls as a sonic invitation and an extension of their commercial space.

Conclusion

Tracing these contested relations offers new insights into the acoustic communities and territories of the sidewalk among urban populations and government or privatized control. As described throughout the article, various sonic media technologies and techniques have been used to discourage certain populations from utilizing the sidewalk within and among other means; however, it is through often similar sonic media techniques that this medium is transformed, and soundscapes of resistance begin to reverberate.

It is important to briefly identify that in the age of personalized sonic devices, headphones have become ubiquitous with one’s relationship to the sidewalk. There are many analyses of headphones and personal soundscaping devices that have been conducted by other sound scholars. ⁹⁰ Similarly, I have explored the sonic relationship of headphones and urban spaces in greater detail in my previous work. ⁹¹ While more could be added about personalized devices throughout an analysis of sounding sidewalk histories, this article purposely shifts attention from discussions on an individualized listening experience to invite the reader (and listener) to a changing communal soundscape by listening collectively to what was and what remains, while imaging what will be.

While this article has explored the historical evolution of the sidewalk through the lens of a handful of sonic media, technologies, and techniques, it is imperative to also address limitations in scope. Further research could be applied to explore the evolution of sidewalk policies, visiting local archives to discern how the use of a sidewalk and its public characters have had to evolve to these changing realities. In the case of further policing tactics and unhoused residents, research on the sounds of colonial legacies embedded in sidewalk management and the presence of physical forms of sidewalk policing could expand this work. Similarly, this work could benefit from a sonic study and recorded archival soundscapes to question, how does the sidewalk sound today? What soundings emerge in this medium and how do media technologies alter this sounding? Returning to personal devices, in a world that seems to prioritize personal sonic technologies, how do these tools shift our understanding of the sidewalk as a space for public dialogue and cultural world-building? For now, I walk and listen for the legacy of the street vendors, the calls of the remaining public characters, the echoes of protest, and musical interludes between the techniques of sonic control. In turn, I am sharing brief moments of trust and communal understanding with strangers in passing.