"Look at it this way"

If you can get through the language that is characteristic of Will Self pieces, there are some important geographical messages coming out here in this piece in The Guardian. The recent URBAN EARTH : Degrees of London walk was another reminder of the power of walking as the participants walked into London from HeathrowAirport and other locations. Organised by Dan Raven Ellison of the Geography Collective, the people involved were asked to concentrate on particular things during the walk, as well as look at the city in unexpected ways. While you're walking round the city, you might also be interested in a nice guide called SIDE WALKS . It's one of two nice travel guides produced by Kate Pocrass: an artist living in San Francisco. Some of the ideas have a touch of our Mission:Explore about them. In fact one of the reviewers refers to some of the suggested activities as 'missions'. I liked the idea of eating food in a particular shape, or capturing snippets of con...

A great one for re-presenting urban landscapes.... Urban Earth is a project developed by Dan Raven Ellison . I have blogged about it on numerous occasions before as a way for young people to re-present the urban spaces that they inhabit. Ben Major has put together a great resource called URBAN STORIES on the GA website. This suggests some additional ideas for using Dan's original URBAN EARTH walks and images....

URBAN EARTH: DAY is a side project of urban earth. The idea is simple, text based and all going well will result in a 24 chapter book. The idea is to gather together a subjective view of our urban habitat through a series of simultaneous global walks. What we sense, feel and think will posted as twitters as we go, creating a spontaneous urban portrait of where we all are. The first walk will take place on a Sunday at 12:00(GMT)... but we will work around the clock. Two weeks later the walk will take place at 13:00(GMT).. until after 24 hours and 24 walks we have 24 chapters of a book... made up of our 140 character twittered thoughts. So you'll need an hour, a city and a mobile phone for this one. How to take part... 1. Set up a twitter account. Have a play. 2. Find a city or urban area. 3. At 12:00AM GMT on 24.05.09 go for a walk. .. If you are in the Solomon Islands, yes - walk at night! 4. Twitter as you go.. feelings, smells, thoughts, prices, ideas, colours, shop names, (ab)n...

Dan Ellison has another plan... Another URBAN EARTH event - but just an hour and you may well not need to go too far to take part... Let's all do this one.... URBAN EARTH: DAY is a side project of urban earth. The idea is simple, text based and all going well will result in a 24 chapter book. The idea is to gather together a subjective view of our urban habitat through a series of simultaneous global walks. What we sense, feel and think will posted as twitters as we go, creating a spontaneous urban portrait of where we all are. The first walk will take place on a Sunday at 12:00(GMT)... but we will work around the clock. Two weeks later the walk will take place at 13:00(GMT).. until after 24 hours and 24 walks we have 24 chapters of a book... made up of our 140 character twittered thoughts. So you'll need an hour, a city and a mobile phone for this one. Who's game? Check out the URBAN EARTH NING to sign up.... Tweet using the hashtag #ueday

Rich Allaway's homage to Dan's Urban Earth ...