Else walks around the city

The icon indicates free access to a linked study on JSTOR. Imagine a walk unencumbered by your phone, absorbed in the splendor of the world around you: the smell of blooming flowers, the warmth emanating from the sidewalks, the sound of the wind passing through and reflecting off high-rise buildings. You may spot a historical monument that you usually miss in the hustle and bustle of getting from point A to point B. Or notice the construction of luxury apartments where work housing used to be. You may be noticing that there are fewer birds singing than there used to be. Consciously or not, you are participating in the practice of psychogeography, a radical method of consciously navigating the world that benefits not only the individual but society as a whole.

Many of the challenges we face, from climate change to the crisis of loneliness to racial and class injustice, are deeply connected to the physical world and our interactions with our immediate environment.

This can be seen in the creation of red lines for communities of color over decades of discrimination or the planning and placement of work districts right in the path of industrial pollution. As we enter the public realm post-pandemic, we have the opportunity to envision new versions of the public realm, evident in concepts such as the 15-minute walkable city, where all needs can be met within a fifteen-minute walk; the creation of third spaces for interaction outside of home and work; and more general efforts to green and promote prosperity in both urban and rural areas.

Psychogeography that integrates psychology and geography

by was developed in the mid-20th century by the Letterist International and its successor Situationist International, two organizations based in Europe and drawing on anarchist and Marxist works, among others. Guy Debord, one of the founders of both organizations, defined psychogeography as the influence of the environment, conscious or not, on an individual's behavior or emotions. Psychogeography became tangible in dérive ("wandering"), defined by Phil Smith in Cultural Geographies as "a study whose purpose is to wander the streets of a city without definite direction, discovering and mapping the surrounding atmosphere."

Debord was inspired by Charles Baudelaire's flaneur

walking in the 19th century, which embodied the image of an unhurried and essentially upper-class male vagabond. The influential German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin added to this concept, where the flaneur serves as "a type of society of interest because it points to the centrality of movement to social life," writes Mike Featherstone in Urban Studies. "The walker is constantly touched by new streams of experience and develops new perceptions as he moves through the urban landscape and crowds. "

Decades later, the Situationists found themselves at odds with a very different postwar Europe in the mid-20th century.

In the face of an increasingly capitalist society, they developed their own more political movement, drawing on the principles of Dadaism and Surrealism. Another of their central concepts was detournement ("switching"): "the deliberate reuse of different elements - such as images or text - to create something new", as A.E. writes. Susis in Cultural Geographies. (An example would be a subversive joke, such as devaluing advertising in an action against consumerism.)

Situationists were already concerned

caused, as Souzis says, by "increasing privatization, big business, and the shrinking of pedestrian-friendly public spaces," issues that continue to shape the development of urban areas by prioritizing commerce over the needs of residents. Amy J. Elias writes in The New Literary History that these radicals "aspired to a utopian, revitalized urban life that could escape the aesthetic tyranny of spectacular global capitalism and become a vital, liberating model of urban living."

Although the Situationists may have lost their relevance after the brief burst of revolutionary fever

embraced France during the May 1968 protest movement, psychogeography became, one might say, more relevant in the intervening decades. It has been linked to other movements such as Afrofuturism, environmental feminism, and Native American environmentalism that address the injustices faced by these marginalized communities.