Public Space Observation
Rachael Blouw
Doctor Henderson
World Urban Sociology
For this project, I went to the University Center main lobby to observe people’s behavior. In this space, there are many people who were walking around, sitting at tables, and going to classes. This public area can be accessed by anyone for most of the day, except at night. I decided to sit toward the back of the lobby area, so I could watch everyone while they went about their business. I noticed several different behaviors between people. Some of this behavior seemed to be normal while others, I noticed that were different and I have never noticed it before. Some behaviors also bothered me. Public spaces are generally social places where there is open and accessible space to everyone (Definitions.net). In the University Center at Ferris, there is open and accessible space to the public of Big Rapids in the lobby area. There were plenty of people walking around and socializing. As I was sitting in a chair, I observed many people doing homework, drinking Starbucks, and playing games such as chess, or games on their phones.
Many of these people were students, who had homework either on their laptops or their book and notebooks out taking notes. These students were in groups or alone but mostly in
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For example, they suggest the when in a highly populated area, pedestrians flow through traffic with impeccable accuracy. One example they give in the article is the way people move through crowded subway station. (394). These people use what they called Civil Inattention, they lacked observant knowledge of what they were doing. I found a way to observe this behavior as there were several people that walked thorough opposite traffic smoothly and seemed to not even realize how effortless they were doing something that looks