1
Détouring Drummond Street
The starting point for your drift through the pandemic city is the Geography in Drummond Street.
I'm sure you will have noticed some of the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the the building in the last couple of years.
The Geography building in Drummond Street was built in 1853 as a surgical hospital.
In this 1899 map of the drains around the hospital we can see how the organisation of space in the building was designed to control the spread of communicable diseases.
Your first activity on this walk is to navigate through the Geography building. This task is a kind of détournement as we're asking you to orientate yourselves in the building through an old map.
How easy is it to orientate yourself in the building using this old map of the drains?
Can you identify where the Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria or Measles Wards were located? What are these spaces now?
Are there any visual or other clues in the design or organisation of the building that might hint at its history as a hospital and how the space was organised to minimise the spread of infectious disease?
Re-ordering space in buildings
Given that the building was originally designed over 170 years ago to minimise the spread of disease, there's an interesting layering of new ordering practices in the building today to help stop the spread of Covid-19.
For many of you this may be the first time since March that you have been in the Geography building.
What do you notice? What's changed? What's the same?
How is the use of the space and the movement of people being ordered in this space? What work are signs, instructions, QR codes, swipe cards and other things doing in the space? Is the space ordered in other kinds of ways?
The building is an interesting starting point to think about the ordering of space in cities.
As you continue on the walk through the Old Town along Grassmarket you take a longer view on how disease and public health have driven the remaking of urban space and 'improving' the urban poor in Edinburgh. This might be something you want to investigate further using some online archives.
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Cowgate to Grassmarket
Walking along Cowgate you're walking through the lower levels of Edinburgh's Old Town.
In the 18th and 19th Century there were significant concerns about disease and public health in this part of Edinburgh. Edinburgh - or Auld Reekie - was infamous for it's smelly and unsanitary conditions. Concerns raised in Dr Henry Littlejohn's (1865) Report on the Sanitary Conditions of Edinburgh highlight issues with overcrowding, poor access, and the proximity of cemeteries and slaughterhouses in the city's 'meatland' (Laxton and Rodger, 2013).
The lower levels of the Old Town - like Grassmarket - were the most polluted and unsanitary. Edinburgh was well known for its vertical hierarchies or segregation. The more affluent you were the higher up you lived away from the foul air and pollution of the streets.
As you walk through this part of Edinburgh can you identify any clues in the built environment of some of these histories of diseases, pollution and how public health was mobilised to improve living conditions?
In the late 19th Century slum clearances between Cowgate and High Street sought to bring air, light and ventilation to the overcrowded closes and winds.
You might look out for street names; plaques; streets layouts that don't quite fit the pattern of narrow lanes?
Cholera epidemics in the 19th century radically transformed British cities driven by discourse of public health and urban planning.
You might reflect on how the current pandemic might remake urban space and transform how we live in cities? Are there any clues of things changing on your walk?
Visual and material cultures in the pandemic city
On your unhurried walk through Cowgate to Grassmarket we want you to reflect on your observations and experiences.
Think back to Walter Benjamin's practices of botanising on the asphalt and the detective work he did as he strolled through the streets of Paris.
Practice the art of noticing. Focus on the small details that might begin to tell stories about how spaces are being remade to slow the spread of Covid-19.
You could listen into some of the conversation between Shawn, Daniel and me as we drifted along Cowgate. This might provide a model or some prompts for your discussion?
How are the spaces you encounter being used?
As you walk along narrow pavements do you notice anything about how people are moving, interacting and giving each other space?
How are spaces of consumption being used? Pubs? Hostels? Hotels? Shops? Cafes?
What new habits of socialising and consuming are taking place? (target face masks!)
What work are signs and other material artefacts doing in ordering urban space?
Do you see evidence of how technologies are part of the ordering of space in the pandemic city? (Look out for QR cards, contactless payments, card access to buildings...)
What work do these technologies do? How do they grant access? Who passes and who do they exclude?
Here's another example of our conversations as we make sense of signs:
An attempt at exhausting a place
In a quirky book called An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris the writer Georges Perec sets about documenting "what happens when nothing happens".
Perec installed himself behind a cafe window and stared to to record everything that pass through his field work vision: people passing by; buses and cars; pigeons; signs; symbols; slogans...
Perec made lists. He lists letters of the alphabet and numbers. He starts listing everything he can see of a particular colour. He records inventories of objects.
As you arrive in Grassmarket I want you to slow down. And spend some time taking Perec's lead and settle in for some noticing work.
Find a spot where you can stay for 30 minutes. Get out your fieldnote book and start to list what's happening when nothing's happening.
Things to try in your group:
Someone could focus on a particular space and make a list of everything that people using or moving through this space touch.
Another member of your group could walk around grass market and take a photograph of every sign or marking that encourages physical distancing.
Make a list of how smartphones and contactless technologies are being used in this space.
The rest of your group could respond to these prompts in your field notes:
What do you notice about the interactions that take place between people? Between people and objects? People and non-human species?
Who's using this space? How are they using it?
How is space allocated to different users?
Can you begin to identify some of the rhythms of this place?
Are there social norms or expectations that shape how people move through, use or interact in this space?
Is the pandemic present in the humdrum and unremarkable happenings that produce this place? If yes, how?
What's missing? Research absence
Doing fieldwork, and being there immersed in a place is often also about tuning in to what absent, as much as what is present.
One of the defining features of early lockdown was the uncanniness of city streets that were deserted, still and quiet.
For some the experience was eerie. While other celebrated massive reductions in air and noise pollution and the return of birdsong to city soundscapes.
As you walk from Grassmarket on your way to Princes Street pause at The Royal Mile.
Spend 10 or 15 minutes walking along the Royal Mile.
Using some of the observational work you practised in Grassmarket start to document what's happening when nothing's happening.
But also begin to think about what's not happening.
What's missing?
What usually happens but isn't happening now?
Who's not here?
Are there traces or small details along the Royal Mile that point to what's absent or missing in this space during the pandemic?
Ghostly footsteps?
In what ways might we begin to research and understand what is absent in the urban landscape?
How might be find out what's absent, missing or hidden? (Memories? Stories? Archives - including everyday archives like social media?)
How might we draw attention to those things that are not longer here in order to tell the stories of absence and displacement?
David Pinder's research with artists like Janet Cardiff who makes audio walks, or the writer Iain Sinclair who excavates the histories of places in London, might offer some cues.
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Studying the choreography of the street in the pandemic city
Head down The Mound towards the National Gallery and Princes Street.
This is one of the busiest places in the city. Shoppers, cyclists, commuters, buses, taxis, cars, tourists, trams, emergency vehicles and the odd pigeon are all using, navigating and negotiating this space.
You should spend about 30 minutes around this site. Slow down, find somewhere to sit and repeat the exercise of noticing what's happening when nothing's happening inspired by Georges Perec.
In particular we'd like you to focus on the interactions that are taking place.
Researching the Sidewalk Ballet
The American planner Jane Jacob's famously talked about the important of the sidewalk ballet and choreography of the street in making sense of urban public life in her neighbourhood of Greenwich Village.
One of the changes that's happened in pandemic city is that norms or interaction and sharing space have shifted.
New guidelines and rules on physical distancing shift the choreography of the street and produce new norms and expectations around interactions.
For example, early in lockdown Liz Stokoe observed new practices of swerving and a new morality of interaction when out running. This example became part of a guest blog on walking in a time of Covid (with, among others, Eric Laurier who you'll meet in Key Methods next term).
During this activity observe and record how people are interacting around you.
Do you see any swerves?
Are people changing their direction to maintain distance?
How are manoeuvres and intentions communicated? What bodily language and facework gives cues to others?
How do people queue? How is interaction and distancing maintained and managed in a queue?
What happens while people are waiting to cross the road? How is distance maintained, or not?
How do people enter buildings? Are there rituals of entering and exiting? How is turn-taking achieved? How are face masks put on and removed?
What happens when rules or expectations are transgressed?
You can try to compare the current pedestrian landscape with how it was before. Can you find any signs of different ways of inhabiting a busy commercial street?
You might also focus on how touch is transformed in the pandemic city.
How do people touch or avoid touching surfaces in the city? Do people press buttons on pedestrian crossings? Do they use hand railings?
How do people touch things around them? Are many people wearing gloves? What might the changing practices of touch tell us about how people are perceiving the objects that surround in the city differently?
You might also reflect on your experiences and feelings of moving about the pandemic city.
How do you feel in busy places?
Have you changed your practices or habits since the start of lockdown?
Do you see or imagine busy places like this differently? How? Why?
As an example, here's another example of a discussion we recorded while making this guide:
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Waverley Station: (bio)securing public space
Our final destination on this drift through the pandemic city is Waverley Station.
Stations - and spaces like waiting rooms and cafes - have long been recognised as important urban publics spaces.
Stations are places of reunions and goodbyes. Stops in the lifelines of commuters. Spaces where might strangers meet as their itineraries cross.
But here I want you to reflect on how the routines, rhythms and spaces of the station are remade by the pandemic.
How is this space ordered by signs, roll tape, announcements, and Network Rail employees?
What are the norms or expectations of what people do in this space?
The uses of security
This is a recording from when we were preparing materials for this walk.
It's a nice example of what happens when you pay too much attention.
And walk around with a Go-Pro held up in the air!
But our encounter with this Network Rail worker points to some interesting ways in which public spaces are being ordered and managed through discourses of security.
In recent years the use of terror threats has been used to normalise security particular in the spaces of public transport. And as a result a host of legitimate practices (from taking photographs to loitering to protesting) become scrutinised and excluded.
Here we have a new twist. The reason we were told we couldn't film was that it would involve being in this space unnecessarily. It increased the risk of spread in what might be imagined as a hotspot for transmission.
We don't want you to spend too much time in the station. But walk through and look out for ways in which security is being used in this space to control access and to exclude certain people or practices.