From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Aug 9 15:20:45 2016 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2016 11:50:45 +0530 Subject: [sustran] 'A good wander unveils the wonder of a city': readers on urban walking Message-ID: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/06/a-good-wander-unveils-the-wonder-of-a-city-readers-on-urban-walking 'A good wander unveils the wonder of a city': readers on urban walking As reports show that walking reduces stress, anxiety and depression, we asked readers for their stories of the joys of city wanders, from Glasgow to Damascus [image: Silhouette of a man walking on an anonymous street.] ?You never step in the same city twice? ... a pedestrian at night. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian Cities is supported by About this content Francesca Perry and Guardian readers Saturday 6 August 2016 08.30 BST - - - - Share on LinkedIn - Share on Google+ Shares 2,385 Comments119 Save for later ?Walking reveals layers of history? *London* at first light is amazing. There is time to appreciate the architecture, to watch the river, to revel in the nooks and crannies and hidden bits of green. It is possible to walk the pavements at whatever pace desired without the impediment of other people and without breathing in the choking pollution of rush hour traffic. Layers of history are revealed in tiny details. A poor man?s time travel. *(Anonymous)* ?Urban walking for me is therapy? I live in *Vienna* and not a single day goes by where I don?t walk. Walking to work or university is for me a mental therapy, preparing for what I need to do during the coming hours. When I feel down, I go to the city centre. Scrolling through the different gardens and look at the architecture always cheers me up. Especially when I feel lonely the combination of parks, architecture and tourists help me feel like I?m not that alone. *(Alejandro Sosa, 29)* ?The paving stones echo my heartbeats? As I walk along the city centre streets the paving stones echo my heartbeats. Pavement cafes jingle with drinking glasses. Traffic stops and starts, time hangs. Aimless walkers look round and absorb the scene, the smell, and the sound of exhaust fumes as the tall buildings watch. *Newcastle upon Tyne* is a city that combines the ills of an urban space with an enduring love of life.* (Asit Maitra)* [image: Newcastle street scene] Facebook Twitter Pinterest Newcastle: ?Traffic stops and starts, time hangs.? Photograph: Rich LaSalle/Getty Images?I go back and walk around the neighbourhood where I grew up? I left *Buenos Aires* 30 years ago and every time I return I walk around the Olivos neighbourhood where I grew up. A year ago I walked first on my own and later with two children as my guides, to see the neighbourhood through their eyes. Saturday, July 4, a wintry afternoon and a soccer game means the streets are empty. When I start my walk I can smell logs burning in fireplaces, and later popcorn when the game starts. Except for a dog?s bark, maybe a car, or a neighbour welcoming friends, everything is quiet. These are the same places I remember from my childhood: the three blocks to school, my friends? homes, the York Cinema, the Borges Caf?. Some of the houses look exactly the same. The streets are lined with jacarandas, pl?tanos and linden. But neighbours are no longer lingering on street corners chatting and building the social fabric with their everyday interactions. *(Silvia Blitzer Golombek)* ?I walk and feel at home? I belong to *Calcutta*, the city the British built long, long ago. The ghosts of the sahibs can still be seen in the dark rooms of the stately buildings they have left behind. Whenever I walk the streets, I look for this past, which is not mine per se but belongs to me as I belong to the city. Esplanade Mansions diagonally opposite the governor?s house. Shuttered windows, trellised ledges. Curzon Park, named after Lord Curzon, is right across the street. On winter nights, I wait there for the tram home. The smell of eggs being fried on roadside ovens fills the air like an old friend. As I wait, the city lights twinkle in the distance, traffic roars, the trams raise a clamour. Inevitably, my tram never arrives. So I start walking again, towards the centre of the city. I wade through the filth and feel at home in a city that is like a piece of past preserved for present times, for me. *(Anusua Mukherjee, 36)* ?You never step in the same city twice? Nowhere is walking more surreally varied and trance-inducing than in *London*. I began by trekking great stretches of the Duckett?s and Regent?s canals, relishing the Victorian grandeur of their engineering and the flashes of beauty among the melancholy abandonment. I have boomeranged from Bloomsbury down to the river, zipped to the centre of Waterloo Bridge with its peerless view of the city (and evocations of the Kinks) and back to the north bank and circuitous routes to the eddying chaos of Oxford Circus and on up to the circuit round Regent?s Park. London is a strange multiverse of extreme wealth in enclaves cheek-by-jowl with mean streets and tat; a thing of monotone heft intercut with ?hidden? pocket gardens and squares, and threaded through by the ebb and flow of the serpentine river. It is so alive, this beast, that it changes its skin if you stay away from a spot for longer than a few months: you go back and it?s sprouted anew or been unaccountably razed. It?s an evolving totality that keeps London quick in all the meanings of that term: live, glowing, swift. It?s as if we?re running to keep up. You never step in the same city twice. *(Anonymous)* [image: Regents Canal] Facebook Twitter Pinterest London?s Regent?s canal: ?I relish the Victorian grandeur of engineering and flashes of beauty.? Photograph: amc/Alamy?When you walk through a city you are walking through time? When I?ve not been able to get to Scottish hills there?s always been *Glasgow*, the town centre with its undulating hills, grid system, and fine Georgian architecture able to evoke a small liveable mixture of New York and San Francisco on the Clyde. I?d just got my bus pass at 60 and took a bus up to the top of the town to look at it. After that I walked home to the south side. Firstly down the city centre?s Georgian canyoned, tobogganing hills to the river at the heart of the city. Then over Bells Bridge and on to the south side. I always feel I?m back in old Glasgow then. On through Pollokshields which for me always brings to mind Van Morrison?s Cypress Avenue (different city I know). On into Pollok country park: the pace of the city just drops away to nothing as you enter the park. Out and past the high flats that they?re knocking down. Up past Eastwood church where the Stirling Maxwells used to worship at the time of World War One. After that I?m home. When you walk through a city you are always walking through time as well as space and that?s what I really love about an urban walk. *(Bert Thomson, 62)* ?Lunch hour explorations lead me to things I wouldn?t have done? I?ve been exploring my home town of *Leeds* on foot for the last two years on my lunch hour. This has been in response to my sedentary desk job. I?ve met some fantastic folk and have done things that I?d never have done otherwise like playing piano in a pub, eating with the Chinese Elderly Association, attending lectures, finding small independent art spaces, meditating in the local Buddhist Temple, going on a tour of Holbeck, singing in a choir. I?ve also been researching the flora and fauna, searching for urban animals. I?ve seen migrating salmon jumping up the weir downstream. All in a lunchtime. *(workerslunchtime)* ?Seeing cities by car tends to be devoid of wonder? I?ve lived carless since around 5 years ago when I moved to *Santiago de Chile*and continued that way when I moved to *Mexico City*. What I?ve discovered is that cities by car tend to be ugly, drab and devoid of wonder. By walking I?ve been better able to understand the culture of the cities I?ve lived in. In little details like if people chose or not to close their apartment curtains or wether they create small sacred religious spaces I?ve managed to create a deeper empathy and understanding of the way of life, not just ?life? in the city*. (V?ctor Gonz?lez, 28)* [image: Santiago] Facebook Twitter Pinterest Santiago: ?By walking I?ve been better able to understand the culture of the cities.? Photograph: V?ctor Gonz?lez?It?s a human experience that?s getting rarer? I spend a couple hours every day walking. It reminds me that we are all in this one big urban organism, which I think this is very hard to see if you move faster through a city. Even though it can be alienating living in a big city, it can also force you not to ignore other people?s stories in a way that you lose if you don?t walk. Crucially, it?s a human experience that doesn?t involve transaction of money, goods or services, and experiences like that are getting rarer and rarer in a rentier, ticket punching society. *(Connor Snedecor, 31)* ?The best things can happen when you get lost in cities? I was walking - on my own - in the old city in *Hue*, Vietnam. The streets were deserted and I was completely lost. I stood in a corner with a map, and a man approached. ?What is your name?? he said. I didn?t realise those were his only words of English, so showed him the map and asked him where I was. He waved to me to follow him ? and took me to his family home. I spent the day with them. Nobody spoke English and I speak no Vietnamese. But I played with the children and we all smiled and laughed a lot. At the end of the day the man took me to the city wall and waved me on my way. The very best things can happen when you get lost in cities.* (Jo Carroll, 66)* ?Walking gives me a sense of connection and makes me less afraid? I am a Kenyan living in *Berlin*. Ever since I came to Europe I have learnt to greatly appreciate and love walking. I love to visit cities and towns in different European countries and I always make a point to walk around and ?take in? the environment. I walk to see the local people, roads, landscapes, parks, and how the buildings change in the different parts of the city. Walking also lets me discover little cafes, bookshops, restaurants or graffiti that could be easily missed when you quickly drive by. I always try to join walking tours whenever I can and so far I have met and talked with people from all over the world and we?ve exchanged thoughts about the place and our home cities. For me walking and seeing what is around me gives me a sense of connection and makes me less afraid of being in a new place.? *(Chepng?etich Biomndo, 31)* [image: A visitor walks through the snow covered Holocaust memorial in Berlin] Facebook Twitter Pinterest Berlin: ?Ever since I came to Europe I have learnt to greatly appreciate walking.? Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/EPA?London feels like an explosion of streets? *San Francisco* wandering is defined by a series of right-angles. Like a schoolyard game, a choice between 4 directions is offered up on almost every block. The simplicity, regularity and pattern of directions to choose from feels reassuring for a newcomer, the grid system makes navigation so easy. *London* by comparison feels like an explosion of streets, a wild web spun out by centrefugal force. Narrow and winding, with not a thought for any kind of city-wide structure, streets spit you out wherever they choose, split unexpectedly, spin like catherine wheels off into multiple roundabouts, and occasionally just stop completely. The London Wanderer can wend one?s way between, betwixt, up-side, out-side, river-side, bank-side, across and around forever. While SF wandering doesn?t hold the same diversity of twists and turns, the surprising length and straightness of the inner city roads sometimes hits me with an overwhelming vastness, a feeling of rushing fast and straight as an arrow along a wide avenue suspended like a mighty trench between two horizons. *(Alice Malia, 34)* ?Walking makes cities human? I do wonder around the city for many different reasons. If I need to think and concentrate, walking is the best activity I can do. When in a new city, I love walking around for miles and miles to get a sense of the space, from the shape and colour of the buildings, to the sound of the streets, or to observe how people live the everyday. Walking makes cities human. *(**Laura* *Ferrarello**, 33)* ?Urban walking stimulates thinking, and triggers memories? Through my personal experience, urban walking is a highly intellectual activity. It stimulates thinking, and triggers memories. Some of my most important life decisions I have taken while wandering aimlessly in cities. In *Damascus*, the city where I was born, I practiced two types of wandering in the city. I lived at the end of a highway stretching towards the edge of the city; a big busy street with wide sidewalks. For some reason, walking there provoked me to think. Apparently my brain worked when my legs did. My other type of walking is painfully nostalgia-driven. The old city of Damascus has been destroyed and rebuilt in layers over a few centuries now. Modern buildings and old courtyard houses stand adjacently in a complex network of intimate alleyways which lays over a Roman grid plan. The result is an urban creation one can hardly get anywhere else. My walks there were driven by familiarity and curiosity at the same time. A maze-like network of streets had me walking the small city many times without ever losing my sense of wonder. *(Rasha Kanjarawi)* [image: Damascus?s Old City] Facebook Twitter Pinterest Damascus?s Old City: ?a complex network of intimate alleyways.? Photograph: Omar Sanadiki/Reuters?Through walking we develop a sense of, and for, places? I was in *Berlin*?s Parisier Platz, the platform for the Brandenburg Gate. I wanted to use walking as a technique to interrogate the quiet rhythms of monumental spaces. I was interested in the things we miss. I cared about how something so simple as walking might reveal them. Brandenburg Gate has been site of, witness to, and protagonist in some of the most significant inflection points in recent human history. But, Brandenburg Gate has more nothing days than it does something days. The art of ordinary life is hidden by misplaced attention. Now, every day, people just walk on by. But, walking doesn?t have to simply be the force that transforms A into B. Through walking we develop a sense of, and for, places. Walking occupies the parts of a city and of our lives that escapes recognition ? too often we wish its wanton laboriousness away. Walking is an ordinary practice, embracing it, and not its destination, demands attention to ordinary time. That day, my world narrowed to the bricks, breeze, sun, clouds, grass, litter, and strangers of the square. Walking recalibrates our focus. Our task, then, is simple: pay attention. *(Josh Oware, 25)* ?I find walking without maps similar to cooking without recipes? Walking is my favourite way to exercise both mind and body. Writer?s block, hazy hangovers, beginning-of-relationship highs and breakup lows, antsy days at the desk or on the couch, arrivals to new places and bittersweet departures, they?ve all been sorted through with walking. I find something uniquely appealing about walking, as it effectively clouds the divide between everyday life and dedicated reprieve. It?s my primary means of transportation in my carless urban life, whether in Baltimore where I lived or now in *Cardiff*, where I?ve been the last year. I set off for hours of unplanned, aimless wandering. I find walking without maps similar to cooking without recipes; sometimes there are unexpected masterpieces, and other times, total flops. Most of the time, it falls somewhere in the middle. There?s something satisfying about experiencing the subtle differences in window flyers and neighbour?s gardens and weather changes (over the course of a few hours and days and months) that one can only get by walking the streets of one?s city every day. *(Raychel Santo, 24)* ?Only by walking can I really see people and their cities? Each narrow, dilapidated street in *Cairo* ran along the veins in my body. To this day, my relationship with the city and its multifarious streets, avenues, squares, markets, mosques, alleys, bridges, underpasses, remains my most lasting connection with Cairo. In new cities, I crave the soothing sway of the ordinary. I find beauty in it, in witnessing such intimacy: a clothesline piercing the blue sky, street vendors, neighbours chatting, the local supermarket, children in the streets. Only by walking can I really see people and their cities. Only now can I witness the passing of time and where we are all standing today. I walk with a destination and without. I walk into places whether I am wanted or not. I walk alone. My walks in the cities that become my temporary homes are the one thing that bridges the distance between myself and the immensity of the world we inhabit. When confronted with why I rather walk thirty minutes than pay a few dollars (or cents if you happen to be in Cairo) for public transport, I only have this one certainty: If I didn?t, I would be forever adrift. *(Lorena Rios, 26)* Follow Jill Hunger Griffin @JillHunger Firm believer that a good wander unveils the wonder of a city.https:// twitter.com/guardiancities/status/760151880672481280 ? 10:49 PM - 1 Aug 2016 - - Retweets - 11 like *Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook and join the discussion*