Walking Santa Cecilia : a peripatetic experiment in reclaiming urban space

Abstract

This article is the summary of an experiment that proposes a way of analysing and acting upon public space. The experiment was done through the re-interpretation of the history of walking as an aesthetic practice and of the game of walking as put by the architect and philosopher Francesco Careri1. The investigation was divided into three parts; a theoretical, analytical and pr ojetual. This path sought to explore to what extent is it possible to apply the theories surrounding walking as an esthetic practice to an actual instrument of transformation of urban spaces into a city made for the pedestrian, for the encounter and for the ludic use of time. Both a means and an end to a more humane city. The discussion was taken to the city of São Paulo as a case of study, and its public space, or lack thereof. A purposedly randomly selected neighborhood was chosen for the exercise – Santa Cecília, a neighbourhood that saw the abandonment of central areas in the 90’s due to security issues in downtown São Paulo. The instruments chosen for the experiment were crucial – not the conventional urban analysis ones, but walking in itself, translated into “corpografias” or bodygraphs, photography and subjective mapping. Along the delimited path nine voids, or urban situations that resulted from the analysis were chosen to receive chirurgical interventions; made through the understanding of both material and immaterial experiences. These interventions might improve the possibilities of people being in and relating to urban spaces, but most importantly this work aims to show a way in which urbanists could look at and interact with cities before proposing interferences in its dynamics; an analysis that comes from within the body and the streets