The forgotten art of walking. Toward intra-active geography of an urban landscape

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to redefine the classical studies of urban trails and wanderings by giving greater consideration to the affective and intra-active aspects of the performance of gait. Hence, the idea is to deepen our knowledge of landscape as a sphere of movement. The need to conduct research on urban walking emerges from the mechanics of so-called “sensory motor amnesia”, an unaware process of memory loss of how certain groups of muscles feel and how to control them. It seems that, apart from such casual matters as small injuries and bad postural habits, the process can be also deepened due to cultural factors, as a result of adapting bodies to modern urban life patterns. The phenomenon of re-fixing specific, human, physiological affordances is manifested by the development and preference of certain techniques and strategies of embodied acting in space, among which some may result in enhancing the sphere of discomfort and others lead to somatic improvement. This article presents walking, as one of the body technologies constituting the quality of spatial experience. Walking is presented as an exploratory, and adaptive form of the art of living, which can improve the quality of human urban life. The proposed treatment of the topic within the framework of an affective, intra-active, urban landscape theory may facilitate a better understanding of the mechanics of unperceived (hidden) affordances, pertaining to the processes involved in the developing performatics of different kinds of walking in different kinds of urban landscapes.

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