SUSO

Geographer, space explorer and urban adventurer Daniel Raven-Ellison re-maps the modern city with his Urban Earth project.

W + P / DANIEL RAVEN-ELLISON

“Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to one and long for the other.” Geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan



For the first time in the history of our planet more people are living in urban than rural places. By 2050 it is estimated that we will be sharing the earth with an additional three billion people, most of whom will live in urban areas. Culture, crime, politics, safety, wealth, poverty, population, conflict, connectivity – cities are centres of extremes and can be both the easiest and hardest places to live in the world. It is this distillation and sharp contrast of human behaviours that is so attractive to the media when representing the city (as well as its large concentration of consumers) and it is this pull towards stories of extremes that plays with our minds and understanding of our worlds.

[Mexico City]

Cities are central to the future of mankind but how well do we really know these places? As individuals our upbringings, education and experiences force us to read and make sense of landscape(s) differently, giving us all unique visions of our world and creating our own unique hybrid worlds that forge together the imagined with the real. Our memories and ideas of the city are like a physical landscape in their own right: highs and lows, peaks and troughs, lifted and suppressed. The way we sense and express our cities distorts their identity: they become twisted, stretched, highlighted or lost as we make sense of these urban sprawls. Our limited and unsatisfactory geographical experiences cast giant blind spots across our mental maps and the only way to attempt to conquer these failings is to explore and experiment with the city. This is the purpose of URBAN EARTH, to (re)present the city as it really is, away from bias yet firmly bridging art with science.

[Mexico City]

URBAN EARTH is a simple, inclusive event. You do not need a high brow education or special equipment. Just find an urban mass then walk across it. In my case, I record my journeys by taking a photograph every eight paces to be set together in a stop motion film, allowing the audience to zoom though the city. In the case of Mexico City this meant counting to eight over 7,500 times. You could just draw a straight line and that would make an interesting journey, but for me that is not a satisfactory approach to getting under the urban skin. For URBAN EARTH the area of each city’s footprint is used to calculate the ‘average’ distance across the city and its geographical divisions of wealth are measured so that if 25 per cent of the city’s area is occupied by the poorest people, around 25 per cent of the walk will trail through these places.

[London]

When I tell people that I am walking across a city they are impressed, surprised or even scared for me. But I wonder why. Why is it strange or even questionable for a person to walk 60km across a city, but barely worthy of a mention when someone walks the same distance across Exmoor? People often stare in awe at explorers on TV trekking through tropical forests or scraping up the side of mountains, but we don’t need remote and distant habitats for adventure; we have our own. The fact that we as humans collectively occupy these spaces and our knowledge of them is extended by the eyes of the media somehow makes us think we know these urban islands better than we do. Culture, arts, education, politics, frustrations and ideas focus on and radiate from cities. And though they occupy relatively small geographical spaces, in our minds they are frequently remembered as the most important. But the real adventure is in walking through and away from these places and seeing how the people of the city experience it day in, day out. The media and guide books would have us fear these places, but what they forget is that bad stories are few and good people are plenty – when walking across Mexico City one person was vaguely offensive; nine or more were overtly supportive, stopping to offer advice and guide our adventure.

[London]

The media would have us fear these places, but they forget that bad stories are few and good people plenty.



This kind of exploration is not just about the individual, it is a political process as roads, tracks, paths, squares and parks are claimed. It becomes an opportunity to see and hear each other, where and how we live. Unprotected by the shields of a car or the speed of a bike, the walk becomes a transient opportunity for people who occupy different parts of the city to listen to each other’s stories and the potential to shape tolerance for one another and challenge inequalities and prejudices – the walker can have an intimate experience that is directly a result of their proximity to the individuals and environment through which they travel. It can be an opportunity to ask simple, fundamental and shared questions about us. Are you happy? Where do you live? Why do you live like that? Why do you accept what is happening to you? When did you come here? Do you feel safe? Where can I buy a beer? Is the water safe to drink? Do you ever walk to other parts of your city?

[Mumbai]

I am passionate about finding new ways to (re)present the world and am fascinated by geography, by writing the earth. I take my inspiration largely from great minds like the geographer Doreen Massey who is one of the most important thinkers about space living today. Doreen argues that if time is the dimension of succession, of change, then space is the dimension of connectivity and of now, the present. This is what is so exciting about geography – it’s here, now and our future.

[Mumbai]

And now is the time for you to look at a map of your place, to study the spaces – the roads, paths, canals, corridors, alleys and holes – that will allow you to flow through it, then go out and experience it, capture it in some way and then (re)present and share with us all your experiences.

www.urbanearth.co.uk