Making time to walk again: (re)introducing walking as an inclusive research method in spatial planning

Abstract

This article explores how walking can be reintroduced as an interactive and inclusive planner’s activity and how it could be reestablished as an effective method for spatial research and planning intervention. This study is, first and foremost, meant as a provocation for planners to ‘start walking again’ and understand sites, places and context by observing and listening. Walking creates time for immersive exploration within the place of practice. It is a way to collect diverse stakeholders’ insights and expands a vision. At the same time, walking is a cry for sustainability; in fact, walking paves the way to sustainability. It offers reflection in the context of postgrowth and degrowth thinking. Our assumption is that by deliberately slowing down, we can find sustainable alternatives instead of technocratic solutions because it opposes overconsumption, big projects and depletion of our planet. Moreover, by walking, we can discover existing, hidden values and find alternative visions for a sustainable future. In our research, we test this especially for peripheral rural areas on medium distance of metropolitan conurbations, which continuously slip under the planners’ radar. Based on experiments with walking as a radical and social activity, in this article we explain how walking can be an innovative practice, something poetic becoming political.

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