Runners make the city their own by choosing their own routes

Column inspired by graduation work by Laurens Westerhuis

Recently graduated Master student Spatial Planning

You lace up your running shoes, step outside, and the city is yours. Endless possible routes with diverse urban landscape typologies such as paved streets, waterfront trails, and urban parks within reach of your home. But if you ask runners where they actually go, the answer may be a bit more nuanced. Running outdoors is about more than reaching a certain distance, maintaining a specific pace, or burning a set number of calories. Various social and environmental factors can influence where you choose to run and, more importantly, where you feel comfortable running. A running route may, for instance, depend on the time of the day, the season you are running in, the surface you would like to run on (sand, asphalt, gravel, etc.), the people you run with, and the environment around you. If you run yourself, take a brief break to reflect on where you prefer to run: There are certainly places where you go more often than others for a particular reason. 

That is why I chose this topic for my master’s thesis in Land Use Planning. I wanted to explore the relationship between runners and the urban environment, and understand what motivates people to choose certain places to run over others. Why do certain routes become popular among runners while others are used less? Why do we instinctively avoid certain streets, parks, or public spaces? And how does our perception of safety influence how we move through the city, particularly at night or during darker seasons? These questions also made me think about how people use urban space: do we use the city as it was designed, or do we also make the space our own by using it in different ways? 

This is where anarchism enters the discussion for this theme. Rather than understanding anarchism solely as a political ideology, I could view it as an approach through ideas of autonomy, self-organisation, and the questioning of hierarchical control. From this perspective, running offers an interesting case: could the seemingly ‘simple’ act of choosing your own route and moving freely through the city be understood as a small-scale form of autonomous or even anarchistic spatial practice?

Growing up near Rotterdam, I wanted to compare a familiar running environment with that of another European city similar in size and urban layout but with a different climate. That curiosity brought me to Helsinki. So, I flew to Finland, spent around five weeks there, interviewed locals while running with them, spread out a survey among runners questioning their preferred characteristics for running, and joined a running club several times to talk to runners in a low-key way, with the main objective of seeing the city through their eyes. 

Lighting and safety perception

During the dark winter months, when daylight is limited (especially in Finland), I found out that perceived safety becomes an important factor in deciding where to go for a run. You might assume that more and better lighting on streets and in parks would automatically make people feel safer. Yet more light does not necessarily mean a greater sense of safety. One female runner explained this clearly: “Bright lighting can actually create darker shadows. As a result, you see less, not more.” What matters, then, is not simply how much light a space has, but how that light shapes our ability to understand and navigate the space. Open sightlines, even lighting, and visibility ahead were found to be more important than sheer brightness when it comes to perceived safety. Runners told me how they avoid public spaces with dark corners and obstructed views, for example in tunnels (Figure 1 and 2), not necessarily because something has happened there, but because something could. 

Road design and running direction

When it comes to navigating urban spaces, another female runner in Helsinki pointed out a road design-related issue: In car-oriented neighbourhoods, lighting is often designed primarily around the movement of vehicles rather than the people moving alongside them. Especially in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the Helsinki metropolitan area, sidewalks and cycling paths can remain dark even though runners and pedestrians are among the most vulnerable users. There were also different views on where runners should run. Dutch runners often use cycling paths because they generally offer better road surface quality (to prevent getting injured by a loose tile), while Finnish runners more often stay on the sidewalk. On shared paths, runners also differed in which side they considered safer. Some preferred the left side, while others chose the right side, running against the flow of traffic. There is often no single rule that everyone follows. The use of the space is not completely controlled by one authority or a fixed set of rules. Instead, people partly organise it themselves through their behaviour and interactions. Runners, cyclists, and pedestrians constantly respond to each other and decide how to share the space. In this sense, the runner becomes an active participant in shaping how the city functions, making choices that are not necessarily prescribed by the original design.

Figure 1: Tunnel at Willemsbrug in Rotterdam with unclear sight lines. photo: Laurens Westerhuis. Rotterdam

I also asked runners to assess how safe they would feel when presented with photographs of different urban environments. Two of the photographs were taken only a few metres apart along the same route, yet produced noticeably different responses: the section outside a tunnel was perceived as significantly safer than the section inside it (figure 2; Baana, Helsinki). This underscores how quickly perceived safety can change due to urban characteristics. A small spatial intervention can influence whether someone continues, turns around, or avoids a place altogether. If urban design determines the possibilities available to us, our individual choices determine which of those possibilities actually become used. This tension between designed order and individual autonomy is where the question of anarchism becomes relevant: can the way people independently navigate, and sometimes even reject designed spaces, be understood as a form of everyday spatial autonomy?

Figure 2: Tunnel with clear sightlines but dark parts, What happens in the tunnel? The bright light from outside forms a big contrast with what happens inside the tunnel. photo: Laurens Westerhuis, Baana, Helsinki, Finland

So what makes a city runnable?

After many kilometers on the paths of Rotterdam and Helsinki, I concluded that a runnable city is not simply one that is well-designed, but one that is well-experienced and open to interpretation. There is no straightforward guideline for designing such a city, because urban environments cannot be shaped solely around the needs of runners (although it would be my dream scenario, of course). Its infrastructure should also accommodate other forms of movement, including cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. As a result, running-friendly environments derive from a range of factors, with each city navigating its own challenges and possibilities. Yet there are ideal running conditions, such as a place where you can see what’s ahead of you; you don’t have to stop every few hundred meters; you can choose between busy and quiet routes you feel comfortable with, whether alone or with others; and, above all, it’s a city where you feel safe enough to keep going.

Figure 3: Illustration of a merged bikeline and pedestrian lane shared by multiple users. Photo made by Laurens Westerhuis in Tallinn, Estland

This brings me back to the question of anarchism. If anarchism is understood through principles of autonomy, self-organisation, and the questioning of imposed hierarchies, running provides a new perspective through which to examine the city. A runner does not simply follow the city as it has been designed. They select routes, avoid certain spaces, negotiate shared paths, adapt to conditions, and create their own patterns of movement. Perhaps running is therefore not anarchistic in itself, but it can ‘reveal’ an anarchistic potential within the city: the ability of people to shape and organise urban space through their everyday actions. The challenge for urban planning, then, may not be to design the perfect route for every runner. It may be to create an urban environment flexible enough that people can make their own routes, negotiate their own spaces, and experience the city on their own terms. To conclude, I wanted to share an article, recently published, where people look at Strava heatmaps to see where a lot of people run on daily basis (Andrei, 2026). This data implies there may be solid infrastructure nearby to exercise. Underscoring that having recreational space nearby neighbourhoods enhances the likelihood of runners to start living somewhere. 

References

Master thesis Laurens: 697209 

Andrei, M. (2026, 28 augustus). Strava’s Heatmap Is Accidentally Becoming a Map of Where People Want to Live. ZME Science. https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/stravas-heatmap-is-accidentally-becoming-a-map-of-where-people-want-to-live/