Walking the Sensory City

A piece in the RIBA journal on the link between walking/drfting and urban design. There's plenty to unpick here.

While following a few of the links I came across this nice exploration of the city of Manchester. This was put together by graphics students, who perhaps had a little more artistic skills than many, but the technique is accessible.

“We are bored in the city” Great visit to Manchester with Level 2 Leeds Graphics students last week. We asked them to walk through the city, making a psychogeography informed map as they walked. Really playful and subversive work #graphicdesign #psychogeography pic.twitter.com/J27HvvlvTG

— Dr John Rooney (@jrooneyresearch) November 17, 2021

And finally, a nice definition of Psychogeography from Terminalia.

Psychogeography is basically how places make you feel. Places are defined by borders and boundaries, what's there and what isn't. Psychogeography is also about transforming the places where we live. It's about experiencing the urban environment in other ways. It's a reaction against the prescribed, officially allowed uses of places - that of consumption, entertainment, transit, habitation. It seeks towards a transformation of the everyday. It offers a critique of urban planning. It is a form of play. It's the poetry of place. It's the effect of an area on your emotions and thoughts.

By doing psychogeography, by walking across places and spaces in a different way, we may learn three new things: About the places themselves, about ourselves and how we relate to these particular spaces, and about space and place in general with possibly seeing a glimmer of whats really going on there.