Kohler, Martin. 2014. „Walking through in stead of flying over – a way to see the flux of urbanization in Istanbul and other places?“ in Walking the European City. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
This chapter aims to discuss walking as a method of studying urban social space that can be used to interpret and explain city regions. In the first part I present references to the fields of aerial photography in urban theory and planning, the challenge of global urban diversity for urban analysis and especially comparison and walking as a multi-sensual experience of places as a “poor methodology.”
These fields situate the practice of “Stadtwanderungen” or Big Urban Walks that will be exemplified in the second part presenting the walk through Istanbul.
„The usefulness of walking-based research is more evident when the object of analysis is a large urban area. In these cases, maps and satellite images rely on highly aggregated data and only allow for the identification of visual patterns from a large distance. As an alternative, Chapter 8 proposes „big urban walks“ crossing whole metropolitan areas. This method produces information that while subjective, it is also coherent and systematic, and can be used to understand the complex social and physical factors behind the patterns observed in maps.“
Anciaes, Paulo Rui. 2014. „Walking in the European city: quotidian mobility and urban ethnography“. Urban Geography Book Review 2014 2014.