El proyecto sensible de caminar cotidiano

Abstract

This article explores the sensory experiences underlying the everyday practice of walking in order to delve into the relationship between the body and the inhabited city. With an ethnographic approach and from the perspective of urban aesthetics, it introduces the notion of the sensible project of everyday walking as a repertoire and combination of experiential elements, tactics, and spatial configurations that appeal to feeling, and which frequent walkers seek to experience as they compose their daily routes through the city of Santiago, Chile. Considering the role or walking in the daily routines of people, the spatial conditions of the built environment, and social dynamics of the street, the article examines how walkers weave together spaces and atmospheres through their movement. These are characterized by the presence of vegetation, sociality, or heritage elements that resonate with their life histories and memories. They are soothing experiences for the body, often found on inner streets that offer alternatives to the city’s main traffic arteries. Over time, these bodily and aesthetic experiences of the city in motion reveal shared configurations of the urban landscape as experienced on foot, along with a distinct form of contemplation marked by a diachronic quality. These experiential elements constitute specific forms of knowledge born from the body and perception, reflecting a way of practicing a particular sensitivity inherent to walking.