Flânage

I never knew there was a word for it.

In Montréal's Maisonneuve magazine, photoblogger Christopher deWolf (a precocious and talented young photographer and writer I've enjoyed meeting a few times at blogging events) writes an article about photoblogging and the renaissance of "flâneurism." He quotes a doctoral student at Concordia, Mia Hunt, explaining how the term came into being:

"The flâneur, she told us, emerged in nineteenth-century Paris, the product of a new bourgeois class and Baron Haussmann’s dramatic makeover of the city. A dandyish figure who strolled unhurriedly down the capital’s boulevards, the flâneur was best captured in the work of Charles Baudelaire. “For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate observer,” he wrote, “it's an immense pleasure to take up residence in multiplicity; in whatever is seething, moving, evanescent and infinite: you're not at home but you feel at home everywhere; you see everyone, you're at the centre of everything yet you remain hidden from everybody.”

Chris, a photoblogger who regularly wanders the streets of Montréal, camera in hand, must have felt the same flash of recognition I did in hearing those words of Baudelaire. While the wandering is sometimes described here as "aimless" I wouldn't entirely agree; I may not set out on a walk expecting to go somewhere or find something specific, that's true, but rather I set out with anticipation as the goal of the journey itself. Alongside that quest for the interesting sight, situation, person, conversation around the next corner exists one's own anonymity and transience. The scene will change, and you will also move through it and into another, and another: part of an ever-shifting interplay between the relatively static structure of buildings, streets, trees and the beings, vehicles, and sensory sensations that move through them. This is the most fascinating aspect of the city to me, and perhaps the way it differs most from living in the countryside, where change and drama are found more on a micro-level, observed more successfully, in fact, when one become entirely still.

(Access to the Maisonneuve article may require filling out a quick, free registration form; for people interested in Montréal it's worth going to the trouble.)

Comments

[Pica]

Walter Benjamin wrote a lot about flânerie in the Passagenwerk... it almost got killed as a possibility with the advent of the suburb but vibrant downtowns such as Montreal's have made sure it lives on, albeit in different form than than Baudelaire's dandy.

The only time I'm able to indulge in this kind of aimless yet delicious walking is when I'm on vacation in a city: no set schedule, allowing things to catch your eye and following them, a kind of random treasure hunt.

Great post, Beth.

[Dave]

That is a great quote. But I can assure you, the practice is by no means confined to urban bloggers!

Never knew Baudelaire could sound so Daoist.

[Chris DeWolf]

Thanks for the mention, Beth! For anyone interested, here's a link to the article:

http://www.maisonneuve.org/index.php?&page_id=12&article_id=2193

Registration is free, but if you don't want to register for privacy reasons, go to bugmenot.com to get a public username and password.

[Chris DeWolf]

since jane jacobs died today, i thought i would add something to this discussion of flânage. jane jacobs built an astounding career on observing the behaviour of cities and the people who live in them. she had no academic background yet her arguments have withstood the test of time for half a century, influencing legions of urban planners, armchair urbanists (such as myself) and city-dwellers. what strikes me as especially poignant here is that her work was based on flânage: she looked at the city and interpreted it.

[beth]

Thanks very much, Chris! I don't know Jane Jacobs' work - where's the best place to start, in your opinion? My own small experience with professional "planners", in Vermont, has been less than satisfactory: the local people knew so much more about their environment and had much better ideas about how it worked, but academic solutions were nevertheless imposed. I was part of a community organization that took this process over for our town, working with the planners but directing the project from the grassroots, based on our own observations of people's habits as well as needs. Our work was influenced by "A Pattern Language." Fifteen years later, our instincts have proved to be correct - the organization is all but forgotten but the things we did are being used, or have sparked subtle but positive change, like a decrease in absentee-landlord-owned rental property. Cities are far more complex, of course, but I agree wth you that close observation still needs to be at the core of decisions.

[beth]

This is from Maisonneuve also:

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF A GREAT AMERICAN THINKER
The Globe, the Star and the Citizen front, while the Post, CTV News and The National go inside with the death of Jane Jacobs, author of the seminal 1961 book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Hailed alternately as an “urban prophet” and the “foremost urban thinker of her time,” Jacobs made an immeasurable contribution to the way we think about cities. After moving to Toronto from the US in 1968, she became an advisor to a series of mayors, and while her theories have found a comfortable niche in academia, they are perhaps more easily witnessed on city streets across the continent. The Star and the Citizen offer the most comprehensive coverage of the thinker’s death, both offering a range of views on Jacobs’s contribution to urban planning. But the consensus is clear: as a long-time critic of urban sprawl, Jacobs laid the groundwork for thinking differently about what makes a city healthy. Gloria Kovach, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, told the Citizen it was Jacobs who forced urban planners to think about the impact of such things as population density and the economic importance of transit systems. “She was a leader and ahead of our time,” Kovach said. If the debate about how governments should treat our cities has now come to occupy a central place in the political dialogue of the country, it is no doubt due in part to Jacobs’s championing of their power. She was eighty-nine.