Geographical Investigations

A Psychogeographic dérive: Alternative mappings and understanding urban environments (50% of total assessment; 1,500 words equivalent)
This assessment is inspired by the traditions of psychogeographic wondering which date back to the ideas most notably of Guy Debord and his fellow
‘Situationists’ https://theconversation.com/psychogeography-a-way-to-delve-into-the-soul-of-a-city-78032
Psychogeography is the art of strolling, or just about anything that gets pedestrians off their predictable paths and leads them to a new awareness of the
urban landscape. The dérive, or drift, was defined by the Situationists as the ‘…technique of locomotion without a goal’, in which ‘…one or more persons
during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there’.
For this assessment we want you to design and then conduct your own psychogeographic ‘derive’. Normally we ask students to do this through some part of
London (or an urban environment of their choosing). We ask you to record your experiences and encounters, thinking as an urban planner or human
geographer. With the Covid situation and current lockdown regulations we only ask you to do this if you feel comfortable doing so, and in a manner that fits
with the lockdown regulations. This means in practice you should do this in your local area, starting and finishing on foot from your front door. As an
alternative, some students last year used Google Street View and did so successfully. We will discuss this in class and help you.
My Local area which I want the paper to be about is Islington London.