Walking City

Jennie Middleton

The relationship between walking and the city has been conceptualized in numerous different ways. An examination of urban, social, and cultural theoretical writings begins to reveal the multiplicity and complexity of how urban pedestrian movement is both written about and practiced. Of these multiple engagements with urban walking, three significant themes emerge, which include urban pedestrian movement as a means of apprehending the city or self, pedestrian movement in the context of debates concerning the demise of the public sphere and urban social encounters, and walking being understood in relation to the multiple spatiotemporal rhythms of everyday urban practices. Recent urban theory and research has increasingly drawn on walking, or the tradition of flânerie , as a means of understanding the urban. The concept of the flâneur originated in the work of the French poet Charles Baudelaire and revolves around the concept of a gazing, male individual wandering through The ...

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