On orientations and adjustments: an exploration of walking, wandering and wayfinding in Brisbane - Meanjin, Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the differences in the ways we orientate, adjust and create new trajectories as we walk, wander and wayfind. Drawing on lived experiences of walking together and separately through inner-city walking paths in Brisbane–Meanjin, we offer a conceptual exploration of the relationship of unplanned movement, spontaneity and affective registers of mobility. Discussing specific glimpses and accounts of our walking, and moments where this drifts into ‘wandering’, we reflect on the episodes of wandering as something more than, or different to, purposeful walking. These are complex processes of kinaesthetic, visual registers, imagination, conjecture and anticipation, responding to sensory cues from wayfinding design. We suggest that wandering creates unanticipated trajectories that orientate and adjust movements differentially in untying itself from direction, simultaneously taking inspiration from the abstracted and often colourful wayfinding and mobilities designs that feature in urban spaces. As a conceptual intervention, these meanderings reflect on research across mobilities, creative methods and geographical research, as a tool for doing research rather than methodological revision. We consider the role of movement in urban landscapes and the encounters we have with wayfinding and mobilities design.