People‐watching and urban life: Toward a research agenda

Taking inspiration from studies of ‘seeing‐and‐being‐seen’ at the vanguard of intellectual debates regarding urban life since the late‐eighteenth century, this paper explores the popular contemporary pastime of people‐watching. Drawing on cumulative theoretical, empirical, and methodological resources generated by generations of critical urbanists I highlight the ways in which geographies of people‐watching is a topic deserving of sustained academic attention. More specifically, I explore how engagement with rhythm, repetition, habit and events, testimony, and protocols offer fruitful avenues to interrogate everyday practices, mundane conversations and internalized un‐spoken dialectics that constitutes people‐watching. Concluding remarks signpost how a research agenda focused on people‐watching can add value to long‐standing and newly emerging urban geographies.