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The city has another map

Routes shaped by atmosphere, attention and the pull of a place.

5 entries · 2 sections

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Editorial illustration: a dashed route across city blocks to a pin
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Psychogeography asks how places shape feeling, attention and behaviour. Guy Debord’s dérive gives this trail its Situationist starting point; later writers and filmmakers offer distinct ways into walking, memory and the overlooked city.

Foundational reading · Guy Debord

The original essay anchors the trail in the dérive’s artistic and political context.

Editorial illustration: a dashed route across city blocks to a pin
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Art & literatureSituationist essay · 1956 / 1958; revised anthology 2024

The dérive · Following the pull of a place

Debord’s Situationist starting point: follow urban atmospheres and notice the attractions and barriers that ordinary maps leave out.

Debord’s dérive sets aside habitual reasons for travel to follow changing urban atmospheres. Chance matters, alongside observation of attractions, barriers and shifts of ambience. His proposed maps of influence belong to an artistic and political programme.

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Further reading · Four different paths

Primary interviews open into personal walking, filmmaking, deep topography and literary mapping.

Editorial illustration: a dashed route across city blocks to a pin
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Commentary & interviewAuthor interview · 2009-06-01

Will Self · Walking against the usual routes

Airport walks and long-distance wandering change the felt distance between places.

Self discusses walking to airports, crossing cities on foot and his book Psychogeography. The interview opens a route into his writing about how routine travel shapes our sense of place.

Read the interview · The Believer (external source, opens a new tab)
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Editorial illustration: a picture frame around an abstract composition
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Commentary & interviewAuthor interview · 2016-09-26

John Rogers · Filming the overlooked city

Rogers explains how a walk becomes a film, following London’s overlooked edges.

The filmmaker and author discusses The London Perambulator and London Overground: how routes, encounters and collaboration become documentary material. Follow the interview into a contemporary practice of looking closely at a changing city.

Read the interview · 3:AM (external source, opens a new tab)
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Editorial illustration: a branching tree of paths
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Commentary & interviewAuthor interview · 2012-05-22

Nick Papadimitriou · Deep topography

Repeated walks connect London’s fringes with weather, wildlife, memory and overlooked infrastructure.

The author of Scarp describes deep topography through long attention to a particular landscape. His interview follows the relationships between walking, writing and London’s margins, offering a neighbouring approach with its own name and emphasis.

Read the interview · Granta (external source, opens a new tab)
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  • Ted Hodgkinson interviewing Nick Papadimitriou / Granta · 2012-05-22
    Complete primary interview text retrieved freely without account or payment on 20 October 2026. Landscape, walking, writing and deep topography inspected. Subscription UI exists elsewhere; this interview text was complete. Scarp and its separate linked excerpt not read for this entry; browser visual review not performed.
    Nick Papadimitriou | Interview (external source, opens a new tab) · In the source library
Editorial illustration: an open book
Editorial illustration · Z13 visual study

Commentary & interviewAuthor interview · n.d.

Iain Sinclair · Maps made from memory

Walking, photographs and literary memory reveal what official maps leave out.

Sinclair discusses poetic mapping, archival recovery and deep topography. This interview offers another route through the city’s remembered and imagined layers. The free reading copy is a university-hosted PDF.

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Follow another thread

Related chapters, with each source and interpretation kept in its own context.

Strange placesLiminal & dreamlikeThresholds, quiet architecture and the logic of a remembered dream.Strange placesWeird websitesPocket worlds, mysterious libraries, inexplicable doors and quiet windows onto other things.Belief & meaningRevelation & counterculturePhilip K Dick’s metaphysical writing and the historical communities around quantum foundations.