Lea Valley Drift: paths, objects and the creation of urban narratives (original) (raw)

Urban Drifting: An Approach to City Comprehension and Mapping

Sociology Study, 2016

Iain Sinclair, in his Lights Out for the Territory (1997) declared that "walking is the best way to explore and exploit the city". But what exactly is that we are looking for in our contemporary cities? And how can walking contribute in tracing (explore) and therefore mapping (exploit) all those elements or situations that we seek for? Urban space is constantly mutating. Our experience of space as a practiced place changes gradually as the surrounding urban environment evolves around us. Amidst "sterile" private spaces and misleading billboards, the neo-urban walker drifts through the city in search for the peculiar, the original, the intriguing, and the fringe. An urban journey/drifting starts and ends without any predefined plan in mind, while remaining alert and receptive to all incentives given by the practiced urban locus (audio, visual, olfactory, and psychological incentives). Originating from the post-Romantic English writers and the mid-nineteenth century Parisian flâneur, urban drifting has been practiced in multiple ways with different outcomes, but yet highly contributory in the depiction and specific mapping of our urban environment. This paper attempts to investigate the roots of urban drifting, its evolution, and its potential utility as a spatial practice in visual arts, architecture, and mapping.

'Neither Here nor There: walking in forgotten territories'

This paper addresses two related problems concerning walking practices in urban environments. The first is to do with the kinds of territories which receive attention in historical and theoretical discourse and the second focuses on specific problems with available theories. Using a walk from Mile End tube station to a residence alongside a canal this paper will highlight the characteristics of this middle territory. It interrogates various theories and models that have brought together walking and space, ranging from the picturesque promenade to the situationist dérive. The nature of this walk reveals shortcomings of these theories, in particular, the emphasis on aesthetic motivation or self-consciousness of the walk. Walking through these ‘lost’ territories, forced by necessity, the experience of self and space fits neither the preconception of urban space (based on the model of the historic core) nor the myth of the ‘natural’ or green suburban realm. The paper argues for new models to understanding such spatial territories. Beginning with Michel de Certeau’s concept of walking the suggestion is for a complex formal-social approach. The paper also reflects on recent developments in the area.

An alternative image of the city: maps by migrants to explore contemporary urban landscape

Ciudades, 23 , 2020

The paper presents the result of an empirical study on mapping three Italian cities from the point of view of migrants during the first period of their stay. It aims at exploring an emerging issue in the contemporary government of a city that is increasingly inhabited by transitory populations: the relationship of its new inhabitants to the urban landscape. Drawing upon a method introduced by Kevin Lynch, 150 maps of the ‘landfall city’ came to life; in the first part the research method and its first application in Milan are presented; in the second part other two surveys, in Rovereto and Bologna, are introduced within the project “Migrants Mapping Europe”, aimed at incrementally building an European map of the present that brings to surface the meaning and forms of the transitory living conditions in the territories of contemporaneity.

Routes as Spaces - Walking as a potential curatorial space

2022

There are many ways to walk; to stroll, to ramble, to trespass, to head somewhere specific or without direction, to meander, to get lost, to find one's way again. Whatever way one walks, the action of moving from one place to another can form a temporary space: A space that holds the capacity to exist within and move between both the public and private realms. Lucius Burckhardt’s theory of Strollology emerged in the 1980s in response to the privatisation of public spaces and the growth of global mobility. In Strollology, space is seen as a construct of perception, landscape is learnt and therefore, can be seen as a collective educational asset. If it is experienced too fast, details can be easily lost. Contemporary cultural landscapes are historically built upon various codes of access and exclusion. More and more often, selected artistic projects are offered as fast-paced experiences with a pseudo-public perception of open doors. If we take Burckhardt’s theory of Strollology and understand that constructing a space is a simple perception, is it possible to therefore perceive new, alternative spaces by mapping a fresh route to walk? Could these alternative spaces focus on re-connecting the private to the public and as Burckhardt hoped for through strollology, prioritise the process of slowing down? As an entry point into these larger questions, this text looks at a few key examples of collective walking projects that have created temporary cultural spaces. These examples are explored through a simultaneous formation of a lexicon of walking terms, which could potentially become the basis for a future language of a perceived walking space.

Introduction: ‘Travelling the Urban Space’

New Readings, 2000

n recent years literary critics have paid as much attention to the City as to travelling. By bringing together these two themes, this volume seeks to avoid the restrictions of both historicity and spatiality. For this reason, the papers of the seminar series 1998-99 cover a variety of urban spaces, travelled at different times. The cities visited range from New York to Rome, from London to Berlin, from Paris to Montreal and Salt Lake City. The times of travelling span the late nineteenth century to the 1920s and 1930s and the immediate postwar years to the 1970s. The papers highlight diversity by taking their examples from literature in English, French, German and Italian. At the same time, they share a concern with the historical construction of space-whether analysing fascist or decadent, naturalist or realist, modernist or feminist texts. Charles Burdett's paper analyses some of the numerous texts written during the Fascist period on the United States by authors such as Ciarlantini, Mario Soldati, Margherita Sarfatti and Emilio Cecchi and demonstrates the different connections such texts have with the politics of the time.