by Fiona Ferbrache
Picking up a concept described in an earlier Geography Directions post (Ferbrache, 2011), a flâneur has been described as someone who walks the city in order to experience it. Here is your opportunity to become a flâneur.
Walk the World is a project being led by the Royal Geographical Society, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad campaign. Through a series of walks, the goal of the project is to inspire people to discover multiple ways in which the 206 Olympic and Paralympic nations are linked to the UK. Examples include walking Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and realising its international connections with Morocco, Greece and South Korea; or strolling through Liverpool and its legacy of international trade. Walk the World encourages people to think beyond the UK as an isolated country, by revealing how deeply embedded it is in the wider world.
Joseph Murphy (2011b) touches upon a politics of walking and walking narratives, from a methodological perspective, in his article: Walking a public geography through Ireland and Scotland. Drawing on his own hikes along west coasts of Ireland and Scotland, Murphy illustrates how walking alone, or with a guide, can lead to alternative ways of experiencing and thinking about places. In his examples, Murphy rethinks contemporary understandings of (postcolonial) public geographies (2011b) and the concept of exile (2011a).
If you would like to Walk the World where you live, or even make your own discoveries and create a new route for the website, then everything that you need to know is provided at www.walktheworld.org.uk
Murphy, J. (2011a) From place to exile. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Vol.36,4. pp.473-478
Murphy, J. (2011b) Walking a public geography through Ireland and Scotland. The Geographical Journal. Doi/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2011.00406.x
