Psychogeography – What is a city? What is London?

“The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals” (Guy Debord, An introduction to the critique of urban geography, 1955).

So looking at a city differently, what does the city really look like or has globalisation made everything similar. Take London, tourists have very little freedom on where to go they are told where to go e.g. London 2012 Olympics. Those in power tell you where to go, they are containing the crowds only showing us what we want to see.

Many authors have touched on the idea of this and the idea of rearranging the city. Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague year (1722) he talks about how you had to rely on your senses and your knowledge of the city to get around due to them blocking off parts of the city to contain the disease therefore you would have to explore and see a city you had never seen before.

Also Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) he talks of someone and there night wonderings of London he reshapes the city, the city becomes full of wonder and excitement it became a personal experience with no plan.

The flâneur was, a literary type from nineteenth-century France. A man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoiseur of the street. Someone that wonders full of modern experiences. This fits in well with exploring a different city a city that one wouldn’t realise is there.

 Rearranging the city has also been portrayed in artwork e.g. Situationist city- The naked city looks at the flow of the city and conveys an emotion of the city and the idea of being a derive.

In psychogeorgraphy a derive/ the Drift is an unplanned journey on which subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the traveller so that they encounter a new and authentic experience.

“in a derive one or persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for a movement and action, their relations their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attraction of the terrain and the encounters they find there…..”

To understand pyschogeography better I feel like I need to experience it for myself I need to begin to look past the end of my nose and become my very own flaneur / derive