Enchantment engineering and pedestrian empowerment : the Geneva case

Abstract

The material presented in this chapter is drawn from a series of teaching and research collaborations between the authors that encompass ethnography and urban planning. These developed through jointly conducting the Anthropology of Communication course at the University of Geneva on the theme of walking in an urban context. At the time Lavadinho had begun an evaluation of urban walks developed within the framework of the Pedestrian Masterplan launched by the City of Geneva. Winkin, meanwhile, had been encouraging students to observe people interacting in public. We started to work with students on the premise of a simple question: ‘what is it to walk, to wait and to observe in the city?’ Every one of us, when acting as a pedestrian – walking around, or standing in wait for a friend, a bus or a green light – observes other people as they come and go, and draws from these observations, and the impressions they make, certain social inferences (Goffman 1971).

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