Walking is one of the most commonplace forms of human expressions, yet the
forms, motivations, and practices of walking vary greatly and are often at odds with
dominant discourses in urban and transportation planning. The purpose of this dissertation is to give considerably more attention to the
human elements of walking by creating a set of new theoretical and practical frameworks
for deeper representations of the pedestrian in the urban space and within a larger
transportation system. The three articles presented in this dissertation outline an
alternative, human-centered representation of the pedestrian, providing theoretical,
methodological, and practical solutions to conceptualize how soft variables such as
emotion, motivation, and especially cognition influence the practices of walking.