I've recently been reading fascinating, stimulating, and exasperating literature by members of the Situationist International, an avant - garde assembly of street-aware groups active in Europe in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Paris, with its ancient central core, a multitude of meandering streets, and engineered wide and straight boulevards, served as their main laboratory. This tight-knit but contentious group, whose central figure was an impassioned, brilliant and sometimes ill-tempered intellectual by the name of Guy Debord , took upon themselves an intense investigation of what they called psychogeography , an inquiry into the ways our environment affects emotions and behavior. Their advocacy for a radical rethinking of how we relate to our own physical environment and the ways we interact with the street in our everyday life should appeal to anyone fantasizing an escape from their normal route (and routine). Reading their essays in Situationist International: Anthology, e
A strolling guide to New York City by Teri Tynes