More excellent conversation about how we as citizens of a place can change how we view a place, via how we map it and travel through it.
By the most brutal logic, maps exist to get you from point A to point B. Navigation tools like Google Maps prioritize efficiency, generating routes that cater to a presumed preference for speed.In a sense, they’re not wrong; time is a diminishing commodity. But by sticking only to the fastest paths through a city, you miss the very things about it that might incite you to slow down and notice what’s around you.Which is exactly what the Likeways app, launched last month, wants users to do. Developed by Martin Traunmueller, a PhD candidate at University College London’s Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, Likeways reclaims urban walking from the realm of necessary drudgery and frames it as an enjoyable activity in and of itself. Traunmueller’s work has taken him from his home in Austria to all over the world; whenever he arrives in a new place, he explores. His aimless wandering through London led him to what his now his favorite coffee shop; in much the same way, he discovered a secret garden in the backyard of an old factory building in London’s tech hub of Shoreditch.
Read the full article: The Likeways App Encourages Users to Walk Around and Discover Their City – CityLab
Mental Flowers 