AK2211 Ways of Walking: Knowing and Sensing Urban Landscapes 3.5 credits

Contemporary research in environmental humanities, urban planning and architecture call for a transdisciplinary approach to urban and environmental challenges. Urban environments are in the frontlines of contestations and policies on citizenship, ecology, housing and justice. But how is such transdisciplinary research done in practice? This course offers an approach through uniting walking explorations with critical environmental and urban theory.

With Stockholm as a guide, co-participant and laboratory, we read and analyse texts on walking from psychogeography, environmental humanities, art and ecology, urban planning, cartography and visual politics. The course also includes a series of walks, in which students have the opportunity to put the theories of the texts into walking practice.

Most of these walks will be tasks and assignments undertaken by the students individually or in groups. At least two of these walks will include the entire course meeting, as a walking seminar. The course will touch upon themes of representation, politics, city government, policy, urban wildlife habitat as well as conceptions and uses of nature, science and technology.

The course aims to introduce different themes in the so-called walking-based research practice and thereby explore field-based knowledge and embodied enquiry. We explore how materiality and meaning shape one another in the urban landscape. Questions concerning film, photography and navigation systems and their role in walking based research will also be discussed.

On completion of the course, the student should be able to:

- describe how walking-based research can be applied to urban studies

- compare different fields of use for walks in relation to knowledge production

- critically reflect on the role that walks can play in art and research in urban environments

- put together an inquiry-based walk in Stockholm and create a way to share it with others

Three years of full-time studies or the equivalent, in any subject area

The students need to have access to at least one of the following: camera, camera phone, GPS, sound recorder or sketchpad for documentation of their walks. If the student proposes an alternative documentation method, that will be taken into consideration.

The reading list consists of articles, book chapters and visual materials like short films and maps.

If the course is discontinued, students may request to be examined during the following two academic years.

• INL1 - Assignment, 3.5 credits, grading scale: A, B, C, D, E, FX, F

Based on recommendation from KTH’s coordinator for disabilities, the examiner will decide how to adapt an examination for students with documented disability.

The examiner may apply another examination format when re-examining individual students.

To pass the course, the student should be able to:

- describe how one or more applications of walking literature can be applied to urban studies and inquiry

- compare different uses of walking as knowledge production

The student should also be able to:

- critically reflect on the role of walking in critical artistic and research practices in urban environments, be it through psychogeography, environmental humanities, art and ecology, urban planning, cartography and visual policy

- compose an inquiry-based walk in Stockholm and create a means of sharing that walk with the course

Per Högselius

• All members of a group are responsible for the group's work.
• In any assessment, every student shall honestly disclose any help received and sources used.
• In an oral assessment, every student shall be able to present and answer questions about the entire assignment and solution.