From Dickensian London to today's megacities--what urban walking tells
us about modern life
There is no such thing as a false step. Every time we walk we are going
somewhere. Especially if we are going nowhere. Moving around the modern
city is not a way of getting from A to B, but of understanding who and
where we are. In a series of riveting intellectual rambles, Matthew
Beaumont retraces episodes in the history of the walker since the
mid-nineteenth century.
From Dickens's insomniac night rambles to restless excursions through
the faceless monuments of today's neoliberal city, the act of walking is
one of self-discovery and self-escape, of disappearances and secret
subversions. Pacing stride for stride alongside literary amblers and
thinkers such as Edgar Allan Poe, André Breton, H. G. Wells, Virginia
Woolf, Jean Rhys and Ray Bradbury, Beaumont explores the relationship
between the metropolis and its pedestrian life.
Through these writings, Beaumont asks: Can you get lost in a crowd? What
are the consequences of using your smartphone in the street? What
differentiates the nocturnal metropolis from the city of daylight? What
connects walking, philosophy and the big toe? And can we save the
city--or ourselves--by taking to the pavement?
