D ériving Through the City
We tend to think of ‘the city’ as expansive, even endless; a vast nervure of connectivity; a network rendered by myriad fragments and countless pathways. But Chombart de Lauwe, an urban sociologist, was trying to illustrate the narrowness of our real lived urban experience. Because when we say that we live in Paris or London or New York, we actually mean to say that we live somewhere in Paris or London or New York–in some (not-so) arbitrary collection of spaces, environments and zones. We live, that is to say we experience, a tiny specialised version of the city, itself inflected by concomitant associations and memories. His diagram tries to illustrate the city as it’s lived–not in expanse but in peculiarity.
To look at one’s own movements from a great distance, decontextualised, seems always to illustrate how one is enmeshed in the same coercive patterns as everybody else.
By Bertie Wnek.