When thinking about mapping, I tried to figure out the best way to convey my actual lived experience in Oakland. I feel that maps often don’t reflect the way the earth and spaces are actually felt on the ground as you move through them. Since I spent a lot of time walking in the Bay Area and walking is my main way of understanding spaces, I decided to map the spaces I walked, as well as my most traveled routes. Since I also used Google Maps to get around and find my way, it seemed fitting to use Google’s map feature to map my experience. Once I completed my map, I was struck by how small the spaces I walked are in the grand scheme of things and as you zoom out on the map, the spaces I experienced so viscerally get smaller and smaller until they’re unidentifiable.
Walking is one of the slowest ways to get around–especially in the East Bay, which is dominated by cars, but it provides a knowledge of the streets, people, and spaces that is unforgettable. I feel that I cannot really understand a place until I’ve walked it, and I often need to walk through it many times for the understanding to start to set in. It was also interesting how walking came to define me this summer because people were surprised at how much I walked and how much I loved to walk long distances. Since I come from NYC, I’m used to everyone walking a lot and I am not unique in my love of walking, but it became something that defined me and made me stand out while I was in the Bay Area. My experience and my understanding was made through walking, even though my work was often done in an office sitting statically in a chair for hours. I couldn’t have understood the spaces I was working and living in without walking them.
This is really cool. It actually reminds me a bit of the eruv (if you don’t know what it is, look it up), which expands one’s “home” into a larger chunk of a neighborhood. Your walking was obviously not aimless, but rather a way to build familiarity with this new place and gain a sense of “home” in a foreign land. I wonder if seeing the geographical patterns you made by walking (which, I agree, is the best way to see a place!) gives you a different sensibility about how the residents of the Bay Area interact with their spaces. Do you think they also make rectangular shapes in their day-to-day lives of travel? How did you collect your data, by the way?