Camminare come strumento per esplorare e conoscere territori: tradizioni disciplinari e sconfinamenti

Walking is a way of approaching directly places and people. It can be a research tool to investigate cities and territories, which can be useful for architects and urban planners. The chapter retraces some methodological aspects and characteristics of walking through a literature review in different disciplines, some of which are beyond urban studies. It appears that the concept of walking is versatile. In fact, walking is a way of self-knowledge or of learning about a territory and an experience for which we want to leave memory. Moreover, it is a way to regain our lost individual corporeity in the everyday life, but also to generate places. Instead, if we study walking in relation with the urban studies’ tradition, we recognize it as a useful way for investigating cities and territories, despite being not new. It is therefore a tool of a ‘located knowledge’. First, through walking we have a vivid and structured experience of direct contact with places. In this way, we deal with space in relation with our body. Secondly, while walking we try to decipher the code for accessing to inhabitants’ local knowledge and to the ‘memory which becomes place’. Thirdly, walking invites us, since we are curious about the changes, to go where transformations are taking place. Fourth, it favours a critical approach and questions our own prejudice about the interpretation of places. So, since we are curious on-site researchers, we become an ironic unexpected presence in places. In this way, we contribute to reinvent a part of the traditional on-site survey. If it usually measured space and investigated relations with place, now we want to add the perspective of time and the relationships among people. They bring designers and urban planners in person, with their bodies, back to places.