Name: Lok Shuet Ying Cherie
UID: 3036107505
Chapter Three of “The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau (1984) explores the experience of individuals walking in the city. He argues that walkers engage in a passive act within the constraints of urban layouts and planning, but they also have the agency to create and transform space through their actions. As he states, every walker is thus a ‘practitioner of the city,’ a ‘voyeur’ who performs the city by traversing it. This statement implies that walkers in the urban environment take on the roles of observers and experiencers, navigating the city in their own distinctive ways. By bypassing dominant structures, they maintain a sense of autonomy and preserve their unique perspectives.
This discuss let me realize that despite being influenced by power and dominant structures, we still have numerous strategies at our disposal to preserve our autonomy and creativity. By adapting flexibly and employing clever tactics, we can maintain a certain level of control in our everyday lives, asserting our agency even in seemingly controlled environments. For example, in crowded cities, urban planners exert control over our movements through road and building arrangements. However, we can bypass this control by selecting alternative routes, utilizing alleyways and sidewalks, and employing tactics that help us avoid congestion and discover faster paths.In doing so, we bypass the dominant structures to some extent and retain our autonomy within the city.
Would you mind sharing one or two tactics with us that you have used? I appreciate that you highlight the agency of the walker, who, in the context of the planned city, is also the pedestrian, and your use of specific examples to contextualize the theoretical argument of De Certeau.
Thank you for your helpful feedback. I appreciate your suggestion to make my reading response more comprehensive with examples.
One tactic employed by walkers is to utilize shortcuts by observing movement patterns and identifying gaps within the urban environment. These shortcuts can take the form of stairways, footpaths, or even underground passages, providing a faster alternative to following the main roads. When walking on Hong Kong, I personally seek out these gaps between buildings or underground passages, as they enable me to bypass crowded streets and steep slopes. By employing these tactics, walkers are empowered to assert their autonomy and forge their own pathways throughout the city, rather than being restricted to predetermined routes.