Tag: Wrights & Sites

Jennie Middleton, “Walking in the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices”

Human geographer Jennie Middleton begins her discussion of walking, “Walking in the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices,” by noting that

despite a growing recognition in the transport policy and research arena of the complexity of walking, and an increased awareness of how social and cultural theoretical writings engaging with notions such as affect and performance might usefully inform broader policy debates, there remains a disconnect between different bodies of research addressing different dimensions associated with walking. (90)

In this paper, Middleton continues, her aim is “to explore critically some of the multiple areas of work on walking,” and by doing so, to propose “an increased dialogue between, and wider acknowledgement of, different modes of enquiry relating to pedestrian practices” (90). 

Middleton suggests that this article “exemplifies both the overlapping dimensions, and disconnections, of different realms of engagement with walking through a detailed discussion of walking in the city” (90). First, it pays attention to “the types of transport research that inform current urban policy thinking,” arguing that while such research “has its place in examining the frequency of walking, it is overly focused on the built environment and lacks a much needed engagement with the actual experience of walking” (90). Ignoring what happens while people walk means that “the practice of walking is essentialised and the heterogeneity associated with different pedestrian experiences overlooked” (91). Middleton is interested in “how pedestrian movement is situated within writings concerning the democratic possibilities of urban public space; the role of walking in performative engagements with the city; pedestrian movement as a means of reading/knowing urban space; and the relationship between walking and art” (91). Her “overall aim is to address how these forms of engagement with walking translate, or provide a medium, for the broader concerns of those such as policymakers as to who walks and why” (91). Some form of rapprochement between seeing walking as a research subject and as a method of enquiry is necessary, according to Middleton, because it would “assist policymakers in their own declared interest in gaining a greater understanding of walking and the ways in which it can be more effectively promoted” (91). 

She’ll get no argument from me: I would like to take planners in my city on walks in some of the most dreadful places for pedestrian activity that exist here—places they have designed, or at least allowed to happen—to ask them what it feels like to ambulate on, for instance, a busy street without a sidewalk, or one with a broken sidewalk where uncovered access holes lie in wait to break unwary ankles; what it feels like to cross an asphalt parking desert on a hot summer day, or to have to run across a busy street because the green walk light gives you no time to make it across six lanes of traffic. That’s my dream, but I don’t know how to make it a reality. 

But that’s not all Middleton hopes to accomplish. She wants to think about how walking as a methodology “might be drawn upon to understand the practical accomplishment of walking, or ‘how’ people walk, in contrast to the current fixation on walking methods being used to uncover more ‘authentic’ access to experiences relating to a broad range of other concerns” (91). Her argument, she continues, is that “in focusing on what it is to ‘do’ walking,” we can see issues that are critical “for comprehending both ‘how’ and ‘why’ people walk” emerge,” which “include the material, embodied, affectual, political, and social dimensions of moving on foot” (91). Oh, add cultural to that list, please. Surely places that are walkable create cultures of walking, where it’s a normal activity and not a form of deviance.

Middleton notes that walking has attracted significant policy interest in the UK, and that surveys and other forms of research have attempted to collect data on pedestrian activities. “Whilst these types of data go some way in examining the frequency of walking, there is little relating to the meaning and significance of journeys on foot to different groups and individuals and how these journeys actually unfold,” she writes. Such issues “are paramount for gaining a greater understanding of how walking could be promoted more effectively” (91). However, most of the research assumes that walking is “a homogenous and largely self-evident means of getting from one place to another” (92). However, walking is complex, and it’s not just a form of functional transportation. For instance, while “situating walking in the broader context of people’s everyday lives is relatively new in the transport geography/transport studies arena,” Middleton writes, “the role of walking in relation to the socialities of everyday life has long been engaged with in social and cultural theoretical writings” (93).

Middleton goes on to cite several examples of “the emancipatory potential” of walking in urban spaces: the work of Richard Sennett on “the social heterogeneity of public urban spaces,” which “offers unpredictable encounters that are democratic and civilising” (93); Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, which emphasized “focusing on people’s perceptions, sense of place, and mental images of the urban built environment” (93); and Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of the Great American Cities (93). “However,” she continues, “much of the literature on walking in the city reflects a romanticism whereby walking is often considered, without question, as a positive urban practice,” including Michel de Certeau’s essay “Walking in the City,” which “positions walking as a form of urban emancipation that opens up a range of democratic possibilities” (93). “In the context of the policy and transport planning concerns discussed in this paper, such as who walks and why, the writings of de Certeau on walking and the everyday raise some interesting issues relating to political resistance,” she writes (93-94). Do people who navigate city streets in their everyday lives really frame their walking as political resistance (94)? How much are “regimented and constrained” by their walking (94)? How are “bodily performances . . . ordered and regulated” in different social and geographical contexts (94)? What about the fear pedestrians experience while walking (94)? And aren’t there a multiplicities of urban walking practices that actually take place (94)? 

What about “the non-rational, non-cognitive, and embodied dimensions of travel behaviour?” Middleton asks regarding not theorists like de Certeau, but policy and planning research (95). “For instance, in policy terms an area might be considered more ‘walkable’ if a pedestrian is able to walk on autopilot and the flow of their movement is uninterrupted by an awareness of their embodied experiences,” she writes, but what about the way that walking is “a fundamental human activity and way of interacting with the environment,” a feature of walking that has attracted the attention of writers, artists, and philosophers (95)? “Therefore, in what ways can discussions that engage with the more embodied and experiential dimensions of walking inform more policy orientated research[?]” she asks. “Are there ways in which the long tradition of performatives and artistic engagements with walking [can] be drawn upon?” (95).

Middleton lists some artistic walking practices, acknowledging that “they constitute a poetic engagement with walking which is not necessarily suitable for exploring concerns relating to people’s everyday pedestrian experiences” (95). She cites Tim Edensor’s discussion of everyday walking and artistic walking (which is waiting for me to read) but feels it does not focus enough on the quotidian (95). She mentions the flâneur and psychogeography (96), but notes that “there are some who remain particularly critical of using the concept of the flâneur and pedestrian movement as a means of ‘reading’ the city” because it cannot be reduced to a methodology and is gender-biased (particularly the flâneur) (97). Besides, the continues, most urban walkers do not consider their movements in relation to the wanderings of the flâneur, according to empirical research (97). And yet, these various forms of artistic walking highlight “the need for a greater sensitivity within transport geography/planning research to the experiential dimensions of pedestrian movement and how there are other ways of understanding pedestrian movement than mapping and quantifying its frequency” (97). “In other words,” she writes, “how walking the streets can be drawn upon the study the city’s everyday rituals and habits, or to emphasise the sensory and sensual dimensions of urban life,” is something geographers could learn from these other walking practices (97). Many of the artistic practices she has listed aren’t about walking as such, but rather look at walking as a form of research (97). For that reason, they could be used to increase understanding of walking experiences that might usefully inform policy concerns with encouraging pedestrian movement” (97).

Middleton now turns to the “mobilities turn” in the social sciences, which has been presented as a theoretical position that challenges the stasis of previous social science research (97-98). The value of this new paradigm “relates to recognising what actually happens between A and B”: the ways that movement is entangled with questions of power, identity and embodiment (98). Examples of methodologies that have come out of this shift include walking interviews, mobile photography elicitation methods, and accompanied walks (98). Middleton discusses the pros and cons of these methodologies, according to social-science literature (98). I’m not so interested in those pros and cons; I’m already convinced that getting planners who are interested in walkability to have pedestrian experiences could only enrich their work. Besides, she continues, while these walking methods are not unproblematic, “there are numerous bodies of work that utilise the practice of walking, or mobile methods, as a resource or approach for research concerning other broader issues” (99). She lists quite a few research projects that use walking as a method, but despite this “rich range of theoretically sophisticated work drawing upon walking as a method, there is little that adopts walking as a method to explore the practice of walking itself” (100). “Can walking methods situated in social and cultural theoretical writings be effectively drawn upon by policymakers in gaining a more nuanced understanding of walking practices?” she asks. “And if so, how might this be achieved?” (100). Also, what are the implications of bringing theoretical writings on walking into a dialogue with “more policy orientated transport research” (100)? 

Middleton’s conclusion addresses that last question, returning to the distinction she made earlier between walking as a subject for research and walking as a research method (100). Much of this discussion is inside baseball (inside cricket?) to me, because I’m not concerned with the lack of dialogue between “transport geographers and mobilities scholars” (100). She returns to artistic projects in her conclusion—participatory walks organized in cities across the globe by URBAN EARTH, the participatory research project organized by Mywalks at Northumbria University, the Mis-Guides produced by Wrights & Sites—and the division between these walking projects and the concerns of planners and policymakers with “the mundane, everyday pedestrian movements of commuting, the school run, or trips to the shops” (100). “As such, it is perhaps worth considering how these creative engagements with walking can be incorporated into the habitual, day-to-day pedestrian practices of city residents as opposed to being ‘one off’ events,” she states (100). “With a surge of popularity and interest in mobile methods, and proliferation of promoting more ‘creative’ means of people engaging with their surroundings,” could ongoing, participatory pedestrian projects (she cites two examples) “be drawn upon much more explicitly be pedestrian planning and policy as a means of not only exploring the ‘how’s’ of walking” but as a way for the public to bring their concerns to the attention of planners and politicians (102)? “It is questions such as these that are proposed as a starting point to an increased dialogue between multiple engagements with walking in order to develop enhanced understandings of pedestrian practices,” she concludes (102).

Middleton’s article is useful—particularly its bibliography, which covers work in human geography particularly well—and it implies the notion of a culture of walking in the UK, without discussing that culture explicitly. The existence of heritage walks, or of an art project intended “to produce a visual walking guide entitled ‘Walk Islington: Explore the unexpected” (102), suggests that walking is normalized in the UK to the extent that people engage in pedestrian activities as a leisure activity—beyond simply walking around in parks. That culture doesn’t exist in this city, in my experience, and it’s one reason that I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to engage in participatory or convivial walking here. How could one set up an art walk that parodies heritage tours without the existence of heritage tours in the culture already? Don’t the convivial art walking practices I’ve read about require the existence of other forms of walking as a norm against which they react?

Work Cited

Middleton, Jennie. “Walking in the City: The Geographies of Everyday Pedestrian Practices.” Geography Compass, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 90-105. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00409.x.

Kevin M. Leyden, “Social Capital and the Built Environment: The Importance of Walkable Neighborhoods”

Another article on walkability: this one, by Kevin M. Leyden, argues that walkable neighbourhoods encourage the development of social capital, meaning that they help people know their neighbours, participate in politics, trust others, and be more socially engaged (1546). The benefits of social capital don’t just accrue to the community: “People who are socially engaged with others and actively involved in their communities tend to live longer and be healthier physically and mentally” (1546). Leyden suggests the term “social capital” as a way of describing those social and community ties: he defines it as “the social networks and interactions that inspire trust and reciprocity among citizens” (1546). “Individuals with high levels of social capital tend to be involved politically, to volunteer in their communities, and to get together more frequently with friends and neighbors,” as well as “to trust or to think kindly of others” (1546). Social capital has been linked empirically to “the proper functioning of a democracy, the prevention of crime, and enhanced economic development” (1546). It’s very important, then, according to Leyden.

Leyden, a political scientist, wants to understand “why some persons and some communities have more social capital than others,” since it’s so important to public health (1546). He wants to examine “whether the built environment (i.e. the way we design and build our communities and neighborhoods) affects the degree to which people are involved in their communities and with each other” (1546). His “fundamental premise is that some neighborhood designs enable or encourage social ties or community connections, whereas others do not” (1546). His hypothesis is that mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods are most likely to promote social capital (1546). Such neighbourhoods are typically found in older cities and rural towns (1546). “These neighborhoods are walkable, enabling residents to perform daily activities (e.g. grocery shopping, going to the park, taking children to school) without the use of a car,” he writes. “Many of these neighorhoods have places of worship, a local tavern, a coffee shop, or restaurants within walking distance” (1546). In other words, they have what Jemima Stockton and her co-authors describe as a higher land-use mix (see Stockton et al). Such neighbourhoods encourage walking, because pedestrians don’t have to complete with cars along busy highways or massive parking lots (1546). Thus, following Stockton and her co-authors again, we might describe them as having high levels of street connectivity or, following Mariela Alfonzo, we might suggest that they satisfy pedestrian needs for comfort and pleasurability (Alfonzo 828-30). 

Leyden compares “[t]his traditional or complete neighborhood design” to “its modern suburban counterpart,” in which daily needs are met by shopping in malls “located along 4-lane connector roads that are typically clogged with traffic” and where trips “to shop, worship, or go to a restaurant, pub, park or library” must be made by car (1546). “Many contemporary suburban subdivisions do not even have sidewalks: citizens must drive to find a place to exercise or to go for a walk,” he writes (1546). 

In theory, “pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use neighborhoods are expected to enhance social capital because they enable residents to interact,” either spontaneously or intentionally, and that interaction helps “to encourage a sense of trust and a sense of connection between people and the places they live” (1546). Those interactions build webs of public respect and trust (1546). However, in contrast, “most contemporary suburban subdivisions do little to enable social interaction,” particularly spontaneous ones, and life takes places “within the home or in the backyard” (1546-47). 

Leyden’s study “examined the relationship between neighborhood design and social capital” (1547). His hypothesis was “that pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use neighborhoods are more likely to encourage social capital than are car-dependent, single-use neighborhoods” (1547). He surveyed people in and around Galway, Ireland, in 2001 (1547). At the time, Galway was the country’s fastest growing cities in Europe (1547). He chose Galway because “it has a mix of neighborhood types ranging from the truly mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented variety (built centuries before the automobile) to the contemporary, American-style suburb,” and because the city has no history of racism of “white flight” that has “affected American cities and that in many ways continues to distort decisions regarding where to live” (1547). The survey was conducted by mail (1547). Galway’s neighbourhoods were divided into three categories: city centre neighbourhoods, including mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented neighbourhoods where people can meet their daily needs by walking short distances; older, mixed-use suburbs, which “incorporate some of the more positive aspects of both the traditional city center neighborhood and the quiet suburb”; and modern, car-dependent suburbs, where few places can be accessed on foot, and where some neighbourhoods don’t have sidewalks or parks (1547). By categorizing Galway’s neighbourhoods, Leyden ensured that the individuals surveyed lived in a range of neighbourhood types (1547). However, the determination of whether these neighbourhoods were walkable or not was made by the respondents (1547). The study measured four key aspects of social capital: “how well residents knew their neighbors, their political participation, their trust or faith in other people, and their social engagement” (1548). 

The results indicated that the research participants’ evaluations of the walkability of their neighbourhoods coincided with the researchers’ evaluations of those same neighbourhoods. In “traditional” neighbourhoods, people walked more (or at least perceived their neighbourhoods to be walkable), felt more connected to or part of their communities, were more likely to know their neighbours and to have trust or faith in other people, were more likely to contact elected officials to express their concerns, and were more likely to walk to work (1548-49). However, those simple mean comparisons do not control for other factors that might explain why residents in some neighbourhoods have more social capital, so Leyden used a multivariate method, which returned similar results: “the more places respondents reported being able to walk to in their neighborhood, the higher their level of social capital. This relation suggests that walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods are better generators of social capital than are modern, car-dependent suburbs” (1549). Thus, the more walkable a neighbourhood was—the more places someone could walk to—the more social capital that the neighbourhood generated (1549).“The neighborhood walkability measure had a statistically significant effect on all of the measures of social capital,” Leyden writes. “No other predictor was consistently significant. Moreover, neighborhood walkability consistently held its own in comparison with the other predictors, often playing a more powerful role” (1549). 

“This study suggests that the way we design and build our communities and neighborhoods affects social capital and thus physical and mental health,” Leydon concludes. “The results indicate that residents living in walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods are more likely to know their neighbors, to participate politically, to trust others, and to be involved socially” (1550). Unfortunately, though America’s built environment—and Canada’s—has, over the past decades, “been moving in a direction that is likely to have a negative effect on social capital” (1550). Many Americans have no choice but to live in “a modern, car-dependent suburb, because not enough viable, affordable traditional neighborhoods exist,” and modern, car-dependent suburbs are what most developers build (1550). It’s not just the fault of developers; “municipal zoning codes and other public policy changes” have promoted “transport by private vehicle,” rather than public transportation, and have discouraged, even outlawed, “the building of mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods” (1550). “Changing this trend will require political will and a shift in land-use and transportation priorities and policies,” Leyden writes, along with a shift in public consciousness, perhaps through government policy (1550). However, before that can happen, we need to know whether the results of this study can be generalized. Did selection bias, for instance, affect the results? Is it possible that “[s]ocial people might be more likely to choose walkable neighborhoods, rather th[a]n walkable neighborhoods’ encouraging sociability” (1550)? In addition, “much more must be learned about which architectural aspects of the built environment most affect health and social capital,” and indeed about the components of walkability: “measures such as block size, density, street widths, and traffic speed” (1550). “Finally, more data must be gathered regarding how the built environment affects health in general,” Leyden writes (1550). Does urban sprawl affect peoples’ life spans (1550)? How does it affect young people or the elderly (1550)? “The consequences of not walking and of not interacting with others may have consequences far more negative, for persons of all ages, than we ever imagined,” he states (1550).

Somehow, and I don’t know how to do this, I want to extend Leyden’s argument from a discussion of social capital to one of walking culture. If places are walkable, then are people more likely to incorporate walking into their daily lives? And would that quotidian walking create a culture where walking is normal and not unusual or eccentric? Might such a culture include events, like heritage or tourism walks, the kinds of events that Wrights & Sites react against, that they want to subvert with psychogeography or mythogeography (see Wrights & Sites)? The city where I live is not that walkable—most of it resembles the car-dependent suburban neighbourhoods Leyden describes—and for that reason, does it lack the culture of walking that may exist in older neighbourhoods in Galway? I think it does, but how would one go about proving such a thing? I turn to yet another article, hoping to find a clue, frustrated that nobody (as far as I can tell) has ever asked this question before.

Works Cited

Alfonzo, Mariela A. “To Walk or Not to Walk? The Hierarchy of Walking Needs.” Environment and Behavior, vol. 37, no. 6, 2005, pp. 808-836. DOI: 10.1177/0013916504274016.

Leyden, Kevin M. “Social Capital and the Built Environment: The Importance of Walkable Neighborhoods.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 93, no. 9, 2003, pp. 1546-51. Proquest.

Stockton, Jemima C. Oliver Duke-Williams, Emmanuel Stamatakis, Jennifer S. Mindell, Eric J. Brunner, and Nicola J. Shelton. “Development of a Novel Walkability Index for London, United Kingdom: Cross-sectional Application to the Whitehall II Study. ” BMC Public Health, vol. 16, no. 416, pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-016-3012-12.

Wrights & Sites. “A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: ‘Dealing With the City.’” Performance Research, vol. 11, no. 2, 2006, pp. 115-22. DOI: 10.1080/13528160600812083.

Wrights & Sites, “A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: ‘Dealing With the City’”

A library search for the term “walking culture” turned up this manifesto, produced in 2006 by the walking performance collective Wrights & Sites (Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith, and Cathy Turner, although the manifesto includes contributions from Richard Layzell, Bess Lovejoy, and Fiona Templeton and contemporaries of the Dadaist movement [115]) for Walkzi’s “Everyday Walking Culture” conference in Zürich, Switzerland, in 2005 (121). What primarily interests me about this manifesto is its title: a call for a “new” walking culture presupposes the existence of an “old” walking culture, one which runs contrary, perhaps, to the manifesto itself, one the manifesto wishes to change, to make new. The use of the term “walking culture” in the name of the conference is also a suggestion that such a thing exists and is clearly recognized. Perhaps I don’t need to worry so much about defining a walking culture—unless there’s a literature that uses that term, one I can’t seem to find for some reason.

The manifesto is organized apparently at random (although looks can always be deceiving): each of the 52 sections is identified by a playing card. I think the nod to chance is both in recognition of the conference venue, a casino (121), and the chance procedures used by some psychogeographers to organize their urban dérives. Apparently each section was a PowerPoint slide, so I’m going to refer to the sections as slides, without trying to summarize the entire manifesto.

The first slide calls for walking to move beyond functionality: to become, in addition, “a wandering, an odyssey of sight and sound, a quest for knowledge and stimulation, a grand roaming expedition, and a living breathing work of art in its own right” (115). The third slide calls for walkers “[t]o combat the functionalism of walking” by, among other things, “having no particular place to go” and “[t]o write the city with your relationships” (115). The fifth slide quotes Guy Debord describing the dérive as a “great game” (qtd. 115). That slide also uses the term “mis-guide” (115), which was one of the themes of the work of Wrights & Sites. It suggests “making things strange,” as if the light had changed, thus making “the city ‘other’” (115). 

The seventh slide suggests that functional walking—from home to the train or automobile to work—is “the antithesis of walking culture” (qtd. 116). The eighth suggests shopping without buying anything, considering “shopping malls as hyper-real museums to consumerism” (116). The ninth advocates “discovering sensations in the textures and secrets” of the city, “a city disrupted to meet the needs and desires of an evolving, mutating walking” (116). The fourteenth slide calls on walkers to “[s]tep on the cracks and find the gaps and make new tracks” and to “[e]xtend your walking territory becoming more aware of the restrictions being imposed upon you by signs and surfaces and the aggressive armoured invasion of the car. . . . Walk a new walking culture to write the city with your bodies” (116). 

The seventeenth slide calls on walkers to “[a]bolish habitual walking patterns, such as the home-to-work-and-back-routine: those head-down journeys when the mind is focused elsewhere and ‘elsewhen’” (117). It cites the example of Lone Twin’s disruption of Colchester by carrying a telephone pole in a straight line across the city, through shops and houses, in Totem (1998) (117). The following slide demands that pedestrians insist upon their rights over the car (117). The twenty-first slide states, “We demand the right to linger. We are loiterers without intent. We are children taking the long way home from school” (117). The twenty-third slide suggests that walkers “re-value public space” as if they were children (117). 

The twenty-fourth slide quotes André Breton’s call for walkers to leave everything—including wife, mistress, and children—to “[s]et off on the roads” (117). In their article on women walking, Cathy Turner and Deidre Heddon object to the masculine adventuring implied by this statement, and instead call for domestic, convivial, participatory walking (Heddon and Turner). Later, the fortieth slide quotes a similar call for pedestrians to be free from domestic responsibilities (119), another example of a masculinist rejection of the domestic that Heddon and Turner refuse to countenance. Clearly Wrights & Sites was not in agreement about this slide, or else Turner’s thinking changed.

The thirtieth slide states, “Amble, ramble, and de-ramble the city in search of wildlife, ancient tracks, sacred signs and paths of desire and fill abandoned roadside cars with earth and turn them into immobile gardens” (118). The reference to rambling in this slide suggests one element of the walking culture to which this manifesto responds: rural rambling. That form of walking culture is relatively unusual in my city: while there are two footpaths within a 30-minute drive of the city, only one, the Fairy Hill trail, sees much use, although with the appearance of wood ticks this spring and the widespread fear of lyme disease, it’s possible that it will see less use until autumn arrives.

The thirty-first slide calls on walkers to create their own maps: to abolish published maps, and use GPS technology to map their own journeys. The thirty-second suggests inviting town planners “on practical courses exploring trespass and paths of desire” (118). The thirty-fifth slide calls on pedestrians to “[b]elieve absolutely that every walker is a potential mis-guide,” that “every walk leads to anywhere” (118). There is a strain of utopianism in that statement, along with the reference to the “mis-guide” theme.

The thirty-seventh slide suggests abolishing ETAs, “predetermined destinations and thoughts of artistic outcomes” (119). It calls upon pedestrians to, instead, “[d]rift for three or four months at a time,” following the Situationist psychogeographer’s Ivan Chtcheglov’s example or, like Richard Long, “let the walk become the work” (119). I’m surprised to see a positive reference to Long’s artistic practice here, given the way attitudes towards his work seem to have changed in the past 15 years since the manifesto was published.

The thirty-eighth slide suggests a variety of walking strategies or techniques, including “[p]layfulness, disruption, gifts left for strangers, the sharing of visions, intelligent flash-mobbing,” “mis-guided tours,” using “wireless on-line technology” to spread “networks of uncontrollable walking, maps of atmospheres and basins of attraction, and festivals celebrating the reflections in windows in the glints in pedestrians’ eyes,” as “the instruments of the architect-walker” (119). The reference to “mis-guided tours” suggests another aspect of the old walking culture this manifesto reacts against: walking tours of historical sites, something that only happens in this city during the annual Jane’s Walk event. Again, the walking culture against which Wrights & Sites is reacting simply doesn’t exist here. Would it be possible to create a walking culture without that foundation? I’m not sure. If nobody walks, would anyone show up for a convivial, participatory drift? 

The forty-fifth slide calls on walkers to “[a]cquaint yourself with methods of urban exploration rejected by the good manners of the heritage and tourism industries” by misapplying a map of one city to the geography of another, an old psychogeographical strategem (119). Again, the heritage and tourism industries are not connected to walking in this city: tourists—when we get any—are expected to drive.

The forty-seventh slide demands that walkers follow the composer Erik Satie’s example and work while walking, instead of at their desks (120). The forty-ninth slide calls on pedestrians to “reclaim the nights in the city. Walking through the streets at the dead of night is not a criminal offence” (120). Such walking, if practiced alone, might be dangerous or at least frightening for some walkers—and I wonder if this is another example of gendered approaches to walking that are rejected by Heddon and Turner.

The fiftieth slide states, “Anyone, anywhere can be an architect-walker—begin by mapping atmospheres and feelings—they are our foundations as we build from ideas and emotions outwards. . .” (120). Again, I hear echoes of psychogeography here, particularly as practiced by the Situationists. 

The fifty-first slide tells walkers to “walk with a sense of not knowing anything about the city,” to consider walking “a constant experiment to discover the intricacies and individuality of your walk that is as distinctive as your handwriting” (120). I don’t see any sign of the kind of compromise required for group, convivial, participatory walking, where “the intricacies and individuality of your walk” would have to be subordinated to the group as a whole.

Finally, the last slide states, “Know that every object, all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition and the precise shock of parallel lines, are potential material for an artwork” (120). It suggests recording “the stories of people that you encounter,” encouraging “personal associations,” generating mythogeographies, and looking for “the extra-ordinary in the seemingly ordinary” (120). That sounds like a call for the new walking culture to be a mythogeographical one, as I understand the term mythogeography.

The manifesto is followed by a brief explanation of its contexts. The work of Wrights & Sites is the most important part of the manifesto’s context, I think: for nine years, Wrights & Sites had been working on urban site-specific performance and art projects (121). The term “mythogeography” apparently was first used in their 2003 book An Exeter Mis-Guide, which generated interest outside that city (121). The purpose of the mis-guide was to encourage “new ways of exploring the city, of making it strange and seeking out its ‘mythogeography’ (the personal, mythical, fictional, and fanciful mappings that intertwine or subvert the official, municipal identities and histories of a place)” (121). That led to the publication of A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006), which I think I have a copy of, and other publications as well. “Drawing on our urban exploratory work,” the authors conclude, “this is a manifesto for the active and creative pedestrian—envisioning a walking that is neither a functional necessity (to shops, to work) nor a passive appreciation of (or complaint about) the urban environment” (121). If that is the old walking culture, it doesn’t really exist in my city: nobody really walks to work, or to shops, and nobody walks to appreciate the urban environment (unless the path around the small end of the lake, and to a much lesser degree the path along the creek, might be considered urban rather than park environments). I never see any other pedestrians when I’m walking away from the lake or the creek. So my question remains: can a new culture of walking begin when there’s no old culture of walking to react against dialectically? How can walking engage with and change the city, using art not as a passive expression of the city, but as an active way to change it (121), when nobody walks at all—when the city itself is not walkable, when almost everyone relies on their cars rather than their feet, and so when no culture of walking of any kind seems to exist?

Works Cited

Heddon, Deirdre, and Cathy Turner. “Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility.” Contemporary Theatre Review, vol. 22, no. 2, 2012, pp. 224-36.

Wrights & Sites. “A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: ‘Dealing With the City.’” Performance Research, vol. 11, no. 2, 2006, pp. 115-22. DOI: 10.1080/13528160600812083.