Urban Wandering
The Practical Polymath #40
Hi Friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn!
A warm welcome to our new subscribers this week.
Hope you enjoy this edition.
Florian
Urban Wandering
Some people love to take hikes in nature and soak in the stillness of green pastures.
I’m more of an urban hiker. Give me the strident sound of a fire truck siren, cars with their windows down blasting 1980s hip hop music and a mosaic of humans going about their day and I’m a happy man.
I’ve always found inspiration in urban walks. In French, we have a very specific word for it: “flȃner”. It roughly translates into “strolling around” which doesn’t fully capture the paradox of a walk that is both aimless in purpose and purposeful because it is aimless. But what is it that makes a city prone to joyful wandering?
The aesthetics play an important role of course. But I’ve learned that urban wandering and beauty have a complicated relationship. Back when I lived in Paris, I sometimes walked home from work along the Seine. While a feast for the eyes, 2,000 years of history can make you feel like the spectator of a show that took place long before you were born. In cities like London and New York on the other hand, century-old buildings and houses are intertwined with new constructions giving you a stake in the script of a story that’s being written before your eyes.
Your fellow city dwellers are another element of the experience. When I go for a walk in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, it is the human circus I’m most looking forward to. The minute I step outside my apartment building, I’m drawing energy from the people I’m sharing the sidewalk with. French poet Charles Baudelaire beautifully captured that symbiotic relationship:
“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.”
Weekly Wisdom
Inspiration capital: I’m fascinated by the challenge of figuring out how to see value outside of our traditional systems of measurement. Some time ago, I wrote about that in the context of the buying vs renting debate. Sari Azout got me thinking about this again with this brilliant piece of insight.
Urban Melodies: I randomly came across photographer Alessio Trerotoli’s photography. His use of super-imposition of different pictures gives a dream-like texture to urban landmarks. Below are a few of my favorite pictures he took of New York City.
Lateral Thought
“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced.”
Michael Collins
Always wonderful to discover a fellow urban wanderer, and you describe so well the experience.
"Aimless in purpose and purposeful because it is aimless" exactly encapsulates how I feel when I wander the streets of a city.
The Michael Collins quote reminds me of William Shatners thoughts upon viewing earth from orbit.