CITY PERCEPTION STROLLING BACK AND FORWARD FROM MY BIRTH CITY OF SUN TO MY ADOPTIVE CITY OF RAIN by Francesca Heathcote Sapey BLOG: www.thelaneoflife.wordpress.com EMAIL: francesca.hs@gmail.com
*Essay submitted for Cultural Context, during studies in Architecture at London South Bank University, 2012 © FRANCESCA HEATHCOTE SAPEY
To you, To me, To us, To all of those wondering souls, To all of the nomad youth, To our birth cities, To our adoptive 'loci', To life, To space, To interaction, To communication.
To the ordinary man. To the common hero, an ubiquitous character, walking in countless thousands on the streets. In invoking here at the outset of my narratives the absent figure who provides both their beginning and their necessity, I inquire into the desire whose impossible object he represents. What are we asking this oracle whose voice is almost indistinguishable from the rumble of history to licence us, to authorize us to say, when we dedicate to him the writing that one formerly offered in praise of the gods or the inspiring muses? This anonymous hero is very ancient. He is the murmuring voice of societies. In all ages, he comes before text. He does not expect representations. He squats now at the center of our scientific stages. The floodlights have moved away from the actors who possess proper names and social blazons, turning first toward the chorus of secondary characters, then settling on the mass of the audience. The increasingly sociological and anthropological perspective of inquire privileged the anonymous and the everyday in which zoom lenses cut out metonymic details – parts taken from the whole. Slowly the representatives that formerly symbolized families, groups, and orders disappear from the stage they dominated during the epoch of the name. We witness the advent of the number. It comes along with democracy, the large city, administrations, cybernetics. It is a flexible and continuous mass, woven tight like a fabric with neither rips nor darned patches, a multitude of quantified heroes who lose names and faces as they become the ciphered river of the streets, a mobile language of computations and rationalities that belong to no one.' –
Michel De Certeau -
What is a city? According to most dictionaries a city is a town of signifcant size and importance, but would a town be signifcant in size and importance without its citizens? According to many architectural fgures a city is an agglomeration of confgured spaces designed to function, hopefully, perfectly. In fact, many thinkers – from Plato to Le Corbusier - have theorized and willed to design utopian cities, as if the existing ones are some horrible machines; as if society was - or even is, meant to live in something so much greater. Although there is no doubt about the possibility of improvement, even if a 'perfect' city would be designed, would it really be so perfect? Does creating an urban space from scratch and totally a
priori consequentially make it better? After all Kandinsky, surely not only, dreamed of a “great city built according to all the rules of architecture and then suddenly shaken by a force that defes all calculation'' 1.
Three points emerge: frstly, it is important to remember that most cities have not been created from scratch, but have become cities due to the infuence of time and evolution - among other factors; secondly, perfection is an undefnable yet defned word, a non-existing reality, an unknown imagined concept which each individual aims to emulate unsuccessfully: e rrare
humanum est. Human-kind aims to some sort of perfection but is not perfect. As a consequence, human-cities can aim to a perfection but cannot be perfect:
errare urbis est; fnally, cities are not 'only' a multitude of beautiful buildings, but many other things make a city be, be so-called city: on one hand its citizens; on the other one, the relationship they establish with the city they live 1 V.Kandinsky, Du spirituel dans l'art (Paris: DenoĂŤl 1969), p.57
in once they have perceived it: their citizenship – that personal interaction created by each person with the urban context they move through every day. Despite these subjective melt-potted perspectives of the polis in which the
polites lives, it is important to underline the existence of a minimum common denominator that makes each city readable to all: a strong, objectively recognized, architectural and cultural symbolism. It is not a case that the Eifel Tower, the croissants and the Mona-lisa Smile are linked to Paris or the Colosseum, the pasta and cofee to Rome. However “we must not consider the city as a thing in itself, but the city being perceived by its inhabitants”. 2 Nonetheless, among all the diferent perceptions, a grain of objectivity exists, but would a city be without it being perceived by its inhabitants? What cognitive process does the urban-dweller go through in order to 'liven-up' his city? Due to our nowadays society travelling facilities: has a 'new urban protagonist' been developed? How does this fgure move through the globalised and cosmopolitan world?
In order to analyse this incredibly complicated relationship that is created between the citizen and its city and which ultimately allows a city to intrinsically and extrinsically be, it is important to understand the existence of diferent citizen types; it is also necessary to comprehend how subjective and personal the perception of the urban context is for each individual – in fact “the city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps” 3. Not only each singular perception counts, but also how every little stroke of the city is perceived. In fact “every citizen has had long associations with some part of his 2 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.S Press 1986), p.3 3 Jonathan Raban, Soft City (Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 1990), p. 10
city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings”. 4 Finally, it is vital to analyse and comprehend the starting point of this relationship which is strongly defned by the concept and action of Wändersmanner, as it being the elementary form of experiencing the city 5.
With the purpose of explaining the topic above introduced, it is useful to look at several precedent studies which have taken into consideration such a subject, developing diferent theories and thoughts on the urban dweller, the urban landscape and the interaction among the two urban main protagonists – or in some cases, antagonists. Together with this, it is also useful to look at a more specifc case study which, in this essay, will be related to one specifc protagonist and two cities: Madrid, as a birth city and London as an adoptive one.
Genetic Cities and Adopted Citizens In the drama of city life 6 it is possible to fnd diferent characters playing the most variegated roles. However a generic, yet important distinction can be made between the genetic
citizen and the adopted newcomer. Illustration 1
In fact, while the inhabitant, whom has always
lived in the same city he was born in, has developed a perception of his polis that has probably – yet, not necessarily- grown hand-by-hand with the urban surroundings that have raised him and foot-printed his DNA; for the immigrant 4 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.S Press 1986), p.1 5 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1988), p.93 6 Jonathan Raban, Soft City (Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 1990), p. 39
– wether the newcomer has been obliged to move to the city or has decided to settle in it – the new urban landscape is “a diferent dream”7, if by dream we intend expectation. As a matter of fact, once the decision of moving is taken, the stranger automatically creates series of images and thoughts in his mind which once he has arrived to destination might be satisfed and match the true reality of the urbs that is going to adopt him - or may not. Despite this brief distinction, wether the citizen was born in the city he lives or he moved to it later on and has lived in it long enough in order to have gone through a metamorphic change from immigrant to citizen, the initial primordial way of experiencing a city is always through the action of walking.
Diferent walks To walk is the starting point. However the verb “to walk” defnes a general action without specifying all the diferent shades that it comprehends. In fact “walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects, etc., the trajectories 'it speaks' ” and “these enunciatory operations are of an unlimited diversity”.8 There are diferent ways of adding precision to such a vague – yet important word. It is possible to add prepositions, adjectives and adverbs to it, in order to understand better the diferent ways of walking. As a consequence the urban dweller might walk in, through, up, down, across, into; the walker might also walk slowly, distantly, frenetically, chaotically, etc. Another way of adding clarity is by using other verbs that imply this action – yet specify the type: walk, run, hike, march, step, cross, jog, wander, stroll, etc.
7 Jonathan Raban, Soft City (Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 1990), p. 40 8 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1988), p.99
It is true that “all this modalities vary according to the time, the path taken and the walker”.9 In fact, the walker itself takes the decision on where and how to walk to a specifc place depending on his mood, his aim, his timing and many other factors - yet there are diferent type of walkers.
Depending on how the city-walker walks, the perception of the urban landscape he moves through will variate - yet the way the walker uses his other senses to breath the environment of his scenario is also a vital Illustration 2
action. These two polis-perceptive functions
are strongly linked. As a matter of fact the way the citizen acts, infuences the way he observes and vice-versa; however, also the urban landscape may and, generally, will infuence the way the perceiver walks and observes; after all as Le Corbusier has said “construction is to make things perdure; architecture is to be make them touching and moving”.
10
Among all of these diferentiations it is possible – being slightly generic – to cluster the diferent inhabitants into categories: some individuals tend to rush frenetically, others to lazily walk, quite a few do not really observe much, some others are bewitched by the scenario they move through and very few of them are capable of fâneuring.
Flâneur To fâneur is an untranslatable french word – among many other things.
9 Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1988), p.99 10 Paul Ardenne, Barbara Polla, Stefan Liberski, Architecture Émotionelle (Paris: Le Bord de l'eau 2011), p.1
However – even if “Balzac's fâneur proclaims that to stroll is to vegetate and to
fâneur is to live”11 – 'to fâneur' is often translated as 'to stroll', even if this verb is not capable of depicting the full french meaning. Flâneuring – or strolling, is the activity and life value of the Flâneur. The character of the Flâneur was introduced and developed by Charles Baudelaire whom wrote “the crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds [...]. His passion and profession are to become one fesh with the crowd. For the perfect
fâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude”.12 This fgure moved through and in Paris, belonged to the 19th century and became – not only the spectator, but the personifed version of (French) Modernity: “modernity is the form, Paris is the content. The
fâneur is the fgure and the point of observation that straddles the two and pulls them together into a unity”.13 However other thinkers have developed diferent theories about this character. Among these: Edgar Allan Poe whom focused on the fgure of the 'Dandy'; Sartre whom analysed the satisfaction of the fâneur and reduced it to glimpses; Musil whom introduced this fgure to the 20th century; Walter Benjamin whom depicted the streets of Paris as the locus in which the fâneur is born and dies, yet mundanised the challenges of it.14
Despite such distinctions, it is interesting to highlight three points in which most of these theorists have agreed: frstly, not everyone can be a Illustration 3
11 12 13 14
Keith Tester (ed.), The Flâneur (London: Routledge 1994), p.29 Charles Baudelaire, The painter of modern life and other essays (London: Phaidon Press 2003), p.9 Keith Tester (ed.), The Flâneur (London: Routledge 1994), p.17 Ibid; pp. 1-18
fâneur, but quite the opposite. You cannot choose to be one: you are born as one. In fact “few men acquire the divine grace of cosmopolitanism”. 15 Secondly, the scenario, the context that makes fâneuring possible and “the setting in which he operates is the city'16: “the city is the scene”17, the theatre through and in which the stroller plays his role. This means that in order for the fâneur to fâneur - as in to live, a “urban epistemology” 18 is essential. Finally, according to most authors, back then, a female couldn't be a fâneur: the “heroic fâneur, is a male”.19 The two main reasons that did not allow a feminine fgure to stroll were: one one hand, the action of shopping, which made her desire the objects she saw – in fact this action threatens the independence that characterizes such a hero by creating an addiction; on the other hand, women were considered part of the urban drama, objects of that city texture and language that and through which the stroller moved.20
“Originally the fgure of the fâneur was tied to a specifc time and place” and sex, but now “the fâneur has been allowed [...] to take a number of walks away from the streets and arcades of the nineteenth-century Paris”.21 Consequentially, this fgure can be found in a diferent city, in the contemporary world and can be a female: the strings are no longer attached. In order to understand better this cognitive process and the two diferent experiences personifed by the genetic and adoptive citizen, it is useful to look at a specifc example, yet bearing in mind the subjectivity of such process and its relationship with the the place and time in which it occurs. In fact, in the 15 16 17 18 19 20
Keith Tester (ed.), The Flâneur (London: Routledge 1994), p.52 Ibid; p.46 Ibid; p.47 Ibid; p30 Ibid; p.52 Ibid; pp.27-28 21 Ibid; p.1
contemporary world, the fgure of the nomad stroller and voyager is moulding itself and becoming the main character of the cosmopolitan 21 st century scenario by embodying the technological evolution and revolution, which has occurred in the past decades. As a consequence, nowadays, the possibility of strolling back and forward and through diferent paths, cities and countries has been strongly enhanced.
Madrid: My birth city and my city of sun. Madrid is the Capital of Spain and the city I was born in.
Illustration 4
In Madrid you breath a very dry and often warm air. In summer, the light is extremely intense and bright, almost blinding. From time to time, in the evenings, it is possible to count a few stars spread in that dark blue velvety sky. When I walk through those roads full of memories and soaked with feelings, remembrance moments from my past flow through and in my mind like oldfashioned slides. It is a lively city, that often appears to my eyes as a fake one, as an extremely photoshopped photomontage, yet a very good one. Too many memories, too many years – yet very few, spent in my city of sun, too many people. A city which is partially noisy and partially quiet. A city that is alive in its appearance but dead in
its true essence – a reality that, probably fortunately, few people are capable of perceiving and noticing. It is a capital full-of and filledwith traditions and past that you can perceive in those tiny cranky roads which characterize the old and historic area of this town. It is through this red and bricked urban texture, which spreads away from Gran Via onto La Puerta del Sol, that you can still smell the Marseilles soap of the laundry led above your head: in those roads now inhabited by lunatic students and old ex-hippies; in those roads in which you can meet the most real poverty and the most lively party
- known by tourists as
'La Movida'. A sunny city in which it does not often rain - yet its colours seem to have been washed up and off, full of hidden and covered-up cracks through which the heavy, greasy smell of the famous tapas leeks: a paradoxically Mediterranean culture, characterised by the barbaric tradition of bullfighting. I keep on walking and, suddenly, I see proper houses - exactly like the ones children draw in primary school: red or grey roof tiles; yellow, white or salmon façades with rectangular windows and a wonderful garden. Everything seems too perfect, but it is all too quiet: no children playing, no noise, no beautiful puppies. Instead, you will find cctv cameras and an upper-class car parked in the front court-yard – rather than in the garage, just to be showed off. Autumn arrives and all those bright green leaves start turning into all the different shades of colours that characterize this season. Sooner or later these fascinating shapes of nature, will delicately fall off the heavy brunches that are incapable of saving them from their destiny. Once this weightless, lifeless, creatures reach the floor, the concrete roads mutate into magnificent
crunchy carpets. Slowly, winter has its win and, even if it has not snowed in a long time, you breath and feel a very cold and sharp air which cracks your lips and suffocates your lungs – the sun is shining, yet without warming. Finally spring has arrived with a few grey clouds and some rain showers: those apparently ghostly plants seem to have been resuscitated and, Illustration 5
slowly, the dry
city is inundated by a subtle humid atmosphere full of growing greens, flowers and the smell of dump earth. Restaurants and bars start to pull out their terraces and receiving their customers in open-air spaces. The street-thermometers start pointing out higher and warmer numbers: the temperature is rising and the summer is arriving. It starts getting extremely hot, too hot. In August, the city reflects its climate and looks like a desert: not many citizens – as they've gone on holidays wander around, while a bunch of tourists, which have chosen the least appropriate month to visit this city, move heavily through it, as camels in the Sahara. Time goes by too fast and I start strolling back and forward from my birth city of sun to my adoptive city of rain. Even if – due to having a family spread around the globe – I often say 'home is where my family is': home is Madrid. As a matter of fact it gives me the safeness and the courage to leave it, because I am fortunate enough to be able to come back
anytime – knowing it will always warmly welcome me with its beautiful sunsets and it's human-size master-plan. Those extremely strong sunsets at the end of La Castellana, after El Corte Ingles and Las Torres Kio, after the clustered construction sites which have been framed in time due to the crisis: the amazing horizon will appear in all its greatness – you will see it, I will see it - going blue, purple, pink, orange and then vanishing into that unparalleled blue cyan sky while devouring the perfect lined up cars. I am in one of those many cars, on my way to the airport: Madrid is 'too' everything. London I was born in Madrid. I live in London. I made it: I woke up one day and realised I was soon going to leave for London, my yet unknown 'city of rain' to-be. I could not sleep, I could not stop thinking about how everything would be. My brain could not stop pumping Illustration 6
blurry images and confusing feelings all across my body and
I could not control the greed of researching the city that was going to adopt me: that euphoric uncontrollable happiness which – from time to time – would be disturbed by a feeling of insecurity. The plane landed. I was all alone, yet standing in the middle of the crowded airport of Gatwick. I had landed in the same airport the previous time and yet it felt so different. Actually it still feels different but on the contrary from then, now I know my way 'home'.
Suddenly, I was in London and both: London Bridge and Waterloo Station appeared to me in all the grandeur, with those glass roofs and metal structures that reflected the pale light that was illuminating that urban eclectic and multicultural landscape. The first impression did not match my mental illusionistic image, it overpassed it. Of course, one discovers nicer things and less nicer ones; of course one lives better times and less better ones, but overall I have fallen in love with London. At start, I had to get to know the city. I did so by walking through it and all its different areas and spots of land. I spent a lot of time going from one side of it to the other, visiting the most touristic places: Piccadilly and Oxford Circus - always packed with people and flashes, big red buses, clubs, sushi bars and noise; the Big-Ben which overlooks the river with its power and seems to be listening to all the people protesting in front of Westminster – yet it reminds me of Peter Pan and makes me believe that dreams can come true; Portobello Market, in Notting Hill, which entrance is marked by those sweet pastel-coloured houses that then flow into the crowded, week-end, old-fashioned market that spreads all along that tight road and is surrounded by pubs and bars; London-Eye which you can hop-on, after have payed an expensive ticket, and allows you to look at London from high above, as if you were looking at a map - yet a dynamic rather than static master plan; and all the many cultural boxes and museums distributed through all this urban network. I was trying to suck and absorb every little angle of that incredibly appealing city. Once I felt I knew the most
obvious spaces I moved onto the least knwon ones: such as Elephant and Castle, were my university is and near which I have lived for the past years; Clapham Junction which is an extremely interesting mixture of shops and typically english brick terraced-houses; Battersea Park which somehow is dividing a posh area from a lower-class one; Hackney Wick with all its warehouses and artistic communities, yet the scenario to-be for the Olympic Games in August 2012.
Illustration 7
With the flow of time I realised I was getting to know London: I knew it as a map, I knew how to move around, I felt London was acknowledged by me – yet never in a total and full way: its multicultural society, the diverse yet defined architecture, the chaotic life rhythm of many people, the grey atmosphere, the various smells and odours, the special mysterious light which covers the sky in winter... Finally I have realised that this magnificent city had adopted me: I now believe I belong to London , I am part of what it makes it be, be an always shifting place. At first, I was fascinated by Piccadilly Circus –
probably like most tourists and new comers I felt it was a strong central point. I used to walk to it, rather than get the tube – as I feel it is to claustrophobic. I used to wonder, wander and stroll in the middle of those skin and dress-wise colourful and noisy people that gathered upon those central streets which link shops, bars and history. I would look at those creatures that belonged to a melt-potted zoo, full of fascination. I would observe that mixed and messed-up, yet symbolic architecture, trying to figure it out, trying to imagine what belonged to the past and what was new, trying to soak my skin and brains with it. On the other hand, at start, I felt Elephant and Castle as a threatening place, I didn't feel fully comfortable in it: I was judging before experiencing, and even if I hate doing it, it's insitu in humans nature. If initially I had tried to avoid certain roads or areas and had figured out my own 'safe shortcuts', now I would say Elephant is actually a quite attractive area: it has its own charm. Probably, because I have lived long enough to appreciate it or maybe because I have lived so many incredible experiences and moments in that area that I have learned how to look at it with different eyes. Even the Shopping Center is appealing for me – while it has been named the ugliest building in London. As a matter of fact, while crossing the round-about by using the subterranean passages, you find yourself isolated from the above traffic, and surrounded by colourful tiles expressing different moments: a labyrinth of tunnels and short-cuts illuminated by bright images which I believe provide some sort of comfort for those human souls that use such area as a home and as a shelter in those rainy and dump
winter days. Once you are reaching the tiny esplanade that precedes the covered market, you start hearing Bob Marley’s music being played outloud on some old stereo - a bit cracky, yet you know it is his voice; you start perceiving all those indian spiced foods and the voice of the crowd making deals while buying fruit or some used book with spelling mistakes in it. I feel happy, I feel lucky, I feel calm among all those mixed up emotions and people: students, buyers, sellers, residents, home-less and dogs.
While
reading
these
two
experiences,
it
is
possible
to
criticize
the
subjectiveness of them, yet some generic similarities and diferentiations can be highlighted. Overlooking the evident meteorological distinction – among the case study itself - several important contrasting clues emerge through the descriptions: on one hand, Madrid is written of in a smooth – yet, more critical way: the birth citizen clearly knows the city since always and even if she strolls through it over and over - getting to know it always better, the protagonist is defnitely confdent about it. However, the post-feeling of nostalgia mixed with boredom and saturation is explicit. On the contrary, the fragmented writing style, that appears when describing London, is soaked with curiosity, intriguing emotions and experiences. The newcomers arrival to the new city is felt as a pure makebelieve; London is sensed as a place he or she can belong to, because the foreigner can invent it and reinvent himself, after having stripped away the past22 - yet this remains non-deletable and the feeling of schmaltz from it will, at some point, occur. Both cities are capitals and both experiences are detailed: past, tradition, sun 22 Jonathan Raban, Soft City (Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. 1990), p. 58
and a human-scale master-plan characterise Madrid; while progression, modernity,
rain
and
human-labyrinths
are
personifed
by
London.
Consequentially, a feeling of safeness - due to its predictability, is evidently linked to Madrid: the stroller knows how to walk through it – and as much as life in unpredictable- the birth citizen can palpate and tell beforehand what to expect; instead, while the new urban dweller is aimlessly sailing through his adoptive city of London, he is as insecure as a tiny gold-fsh in the immense ocean. However, this feeling contributes to the enhancement of his senses and increases the sensation of adrenaline when discovering this continuously surprising urban texture. Both cities are 'too' everything, yet in totally diferent ways - as their perceptions are linked to diferent times, moments and experiences. In fact, Madrid appears as saturating: too many people, too many known-faces and places. London instead is too unknown, too unpredictable, too exciting. If Madrid is felt as a perceived city, London – on the contrary appears as a never fully-perceived one: Madrid is static, framed in time while London is in continuous change, an urban chameleon. Finally, another important – yet subtle diferentiation can be made when looking at the use of the word 'home'. Madrid is home, as the root-hooked genetic loci which conceived this protagonist, yet London can be seen as the new adoptive home – which one day might become the site of her own root-setting.
Illustration 8
Comparing the case study to other experiences helps bringing light onto the points dealt with through this essay. In fact, while 'our' stroller has fallen in love with London, Anthony Ham could not avoid feeling the same way – yet diferently from her - about Madrid. Despite this, he states – similarly to 'our' stroller - that “in winter, Madrid, most often enjoys cool but crystal-clear days” while “in August […] the city is uncharacteristically quiet” 23 and also agrees on the fact that “Madrid is not a city that shifts its loyalties easily”24 which can be linked to the strong traditional spanish Capital that 'our' young urban dweller was born in. However, as Vesna Maric, 'our' young Londoner believes that “the longer time you spend here, the more you'll love it” 25 and feels that the hearbeating capital of Europe is “a vibrant city year-around”.26
Finally it is possible to answer the initial introductory questions and conclude by saying that “Cities are civilization”. 27 This interesting quote summarizes and contains all the answers. In fact, it is possible to agree that a city would not be
23 Anthony Ham, Madrid: City Guide (Google e-book, Lonely Planet: 5 February 2010), http://books.google.co.uk/, [accessed January 2012] 24 Ibid. 25 Tom Masters, Steve Fallon and Vesna Maric, London: City Guide (Google e-book, Lonely Planet: 5 February 2010), http://books.google.co.uk/, [accessed January 2012]. 26 Ibid. 27 Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout (ed.), City Readers (Google e-book: Taylor & Francis/Routledge's e-book collection: 2011), http://books.google.co.uk/, [accessed January 2012].
without, not only its citizens perceiving it, but also without, ultimately, its civilization having built it, developed it and believed in it. Secondly, even if each perception of the urban landscape is subjective to each individual, a minimum common denominator distinguishes one city from the other. Thirdly a new voyager character has been created, this is the cosmopolitan citizen, capable of travelling faster, discovering new cities and living between two or more polis – yet one will always remain his native home while the adoptive one a possible city to set-roots-in. Finally, the primordial way of experiencing a city was, is and will always be by foot; not by plane, nor looking at a map.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ardenne, P.; Polla, B. & Liberski, S. (2011) Architecture èmotionelle. 1st ed. Paris: Le Bord de l'eau.
Baudelaire, C. (2003) The painter of modern life and other essays. 4th ed. London: Phaidon Press.
Calvino, I. (1973) Le cittâ invisibili. 1st ed. Turin: Einaudi. De Certeau, M. (1988) The practice of everyday life. 1st Paperback printed ed. London: University of California Press. Ham, A. Madrid: City Guide (Google e-book, Lonely Planet: 5 February 2010).
Le Gates, R. & Stout, F. City Reader. (Google e-book: Taylor & Francis/Routledge's e-book collection: 2011).
Lynch, K. (1986) The image of the city. 18th ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T Press. Masters,T.; Fallon, S. & Maric, V. London: City Guide (Google e-book, Lonely Planet: 5 February
2010).
Raban, J. (1990) Soft city. 4th ed. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. Tester, K. (ed.) (1994) The flâneur. 1st ed. London: Routledge. White, E. (2001) The flâneur. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. IMAGES
Illustration 1: No title available. [Online. Available at:http://people.tribe.net/jemini/blog/49035b1a-688e-489a-8e85-c166e26c018d [Accessed: January 2012] ]
Illustration 2: Delicacy, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill) Illustration 3: No title available. [Online. Available at : http://www.g.peaker.dsl.pipex.com/arcades/Flan.3.jpg [Accessed: January 2012] ]
Illustration 4: Urban Late Sunset, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill) Illustration 5: Above your sight, above your head, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill)
Illustration 6: London Subtle Outline, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill) Illustration 7: Chameleon City Walls, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill) Illustration 8: Sand Heart, by Francesca Heathcote Sapey (Frankie Von Chill)
London South Bank University ESSAY for Cultural Context III PROFESSOR Matthew Barac