Watching people in the city

This book looks rather good. Ana Kinsella has written about the value of observing people in the city.

This Financial Times essay introduces some of the themes of the book which link with ideas of psychogeography and place representation. 

Some of our Mission:Explore missions were also about observing the behaviour of people, and it is also the basis for a whole branch of ethnographic fieldwork which Claire Kydnt and I presented to the PTI at the start of summer - see the post earlier on the blog.

On travelling on the underground, Ana writes:

"There is a siloing of the self that many Londoners tacitly agree to, a trade-off we make between clinging to the barest sliver of our own humanity and travelling in a fast-moving sardine can under the earth’s surface to get to work in the morning."

There are also references here to Georges Perec of course.

This review makes the connection with his work.

One to add to the reading pile.