An introduction to wandering

“The world is not a thing or plurality of things that can be explicitly seen or studied. It is more like an articulated continuum to which we all belong.”

-Dalibor Vessely, "Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation"

I have been to Paris, France, two times. While that is likely an uninteresting statistic, something I noticed on my second visit made me think about how cities communicate with us, the inhabitants and visitors.

While walking through the labyrinthine streets of the Rive Gauche, I realized that I was taking the exact same path that I had taken four years earlier.

When I travel to the cities of this world, I walk. I leave my hotel or hostel, with no map, with only a general direction, and wander. I like the city to guide me. If I walk in a direction and I see something intriguing down a side street, there I go. A series of interesting buildings, spaces and streets grab my attention, and lead me through the city. This is how the city communicated with me.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss the communication between a city and people. My method of “reading” a place I am visiting or inhabiting has long come through wandering. I will attempt to explain how various cities have guided my walks without suggesting specific routes through any cities, because what is of highest interest is the development of personal communication. Any reader will likely find their own way in any city, guided by their own interests. The purpose is to discuss the variety of ways cities describe themselves, their morphologies, their nuances and characters.

Note the Arc de Triomphe in the distance in both images. Think of this as your goal. Imagine how different the journey can be to the same goal, if you start from equally distant beginnings.