Navigation
Our urban formation involves an activity I refer to as “navigation.” As we make our way through a city navigation is one of three spiritually significant ways we engage a city.
Navigation involves creating personal patterns of movement and association in and through the city.
In thinking about navigation you might pursue some of the following questions:
How do you move through the city? Do you walk? Do you drive? What are the most frequent pathways, such as streets, that you take? What streets or parts of the city are unfamiliar to you? What parts of the city do you try to avoid in your navigation?
How do you experience these urban pathways? Are they comforting in their familiarity? Do they invoke fear? Are the paths you take magnates for social engagement or are they simply channels of movement?
How might you see the city differently if you traveled through it by other routes?
How do you capture these experiences through the “mental maps” or “pictures” you carry in your head? How the do you use these pictures to shape your decisions or guide your future actions?
In future posts the Journal will pay particular attention to how we might think about walking the city, the nature of the city grid, the roles of boulevards and freeways, and the function of signs and neon lights,
