Midtown Walks
Personal Exploration
Uptown Waterloo – Downtown Kitchener, 2020
I walked from Uptown Waterloo and Downtown Kitchener meandering off the main thoroughfare and keeping to the straightaway on the return. While this area “in-between” is ambiguous when experienced from the main thoroughfare, the meandering route told a rich story about Midtown.
My findings motivated a series of recordings informing the mapping of a walk I had planned to lead at this year’s Jane’s Walk. Our local festival has been cancelled but I’m hoping to promote participation and maintain the essence of Jane’s Walk without physically gathering or walking together. The idea is that this self-guided map will provoke exploration, reframing our surroundings and illuminating the otherwise unnoticed. So if I’ve peaked your interest, download a copy of the walking tour map and go for a stroll!
“Our gait is as personal as a fingerprint, and so are our multiple itineraries. Knowledge is grown along the myriad of paths we take”
— Tim Ingold
“Architecture is thus read as having the capacity to induce slow speeds, to inhabit silences, to trace new cultural vacancies and derelict spaces.”
— Felicity D. Scott
“Understanding cities and architecture – and communicating that understanding – involves telling real stories about real places…”
— Borden, Kerr, Pivaro, & Rendell
“Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life…”
— Sadie Plant
“It’s from the fragments,
the forgotten bits, that you actually read the world”
— Borden, Kerr, Pivaro, & Rendell