Walking in the city

Standing on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center, one can see all of
Manhattan stretched out below. The city looks like a wave, with its tallest
buildings in Wall Street and Midtown, dipping down in between at
Greenwich, and then rising again before fading into the distance past
Harlem. The view makes New York seem frozen in time, even though it
is a place of constant change—where old buildings quickly become
obsolete and are replaced by new ones. Unlike Rome, which embraces
its past, New York reinvents itself constantly, throwing away what came
before in pursuit of the future.

From this height, the city appears like a giant text, filled with extreme
contrasts—wealth and poverty, old and new, different races and
architectural styles. The skyline reflects both ambition and destruction.
Unlike the detailed miniatures of the past, where opposites were
harmoniously woven into mystical designs, New York’s chaos is written
in towering buildings of concrete, steel, and glass. It is a city of
extremes, constantly pushing the limits of production and consumption.

Looking down from the top of the tower, one feels removed from the
chaos of the streets below. Up here, the body is no longer controlled by
the twisting streets or overwhelmed by the energy of traffic and people.
Instead, one becomes a detached observer, able to "read" the city from
above. This elevated perspective creates a feeling of power—like a god
looking down on the world. It feeds a human desire to see everything, to
make sense of it all, and to control it through knowledge. But this
experience is only temporary. Eventually, one must return to the crowded
streets below, where life is messy and unpredictable.

A poster on the 110th floor sums up this contrast with an ironic message:
*"It's hard to be down when you're up."* The desire to see the city from
above existed long before skyscrapers made it possible. Medieval and
Renaissance painters imagined cities from viewpoints that no one had
yet experienced. These images turned the viewer into an all-seeing eye,
a kind of god. Today, technology has made that once-imaginary
perspective real. The World Trade Center, standing 1,370 feet tall, allows
people to experience the city as a "text"—organized, understandable,
and still. But is this view anything more than an illusion?

The city seen from above is just a representation, much like a map
drawn by an urban planner or a city designed on paper. It ignores the
reality of those who actually live and move through the streets. Regular
people experience the city differently—they walk through it, shaping its
spaces without realizing it. They don’t "read" the city like a book; they
"write" it through their daily routines, unknowingly creating a living,
changing story. Their experiences remain invisible from above.

Beneath the planned and structured city is another, more fluid and
unpredictable one. It is shaped by movement, habits, and small,
unnoticed actions. While the visible city is neatly designed, the lived city
is made up of shifting patterns that escape easy understanding. This
constant activity creates a city that is not just a fixed place but a
dynamic, evolving experience.

The World Trade Center is just one example of how Western cities have
been shaped by a desire for control and organization. For centuries, city
planners have tried to manage urban chaos by turning cities into
concepts—things that can be understood, planned, and controlled. As
Erasmus once said, *"The city is a huge monastery,"* meaning that cities
attempt to impose order on messy human life. Seeing the city from
above makes it appear as a unified whole, but in reality, it is a collection
of countless individual experiences that cannot be fully captured in a
single view.
The concept of the city, shaped by urban planning and utopian ideals, is
based on three main ideas. First, it aims to create an organized and
controlled space by removing any disruptions—whether physical,
mental, or political—that might challenge its rational structure. Second, it
seeks to replace unpredictable traditions and cultural influences with a
controlled, systematic approach. By simplifying complex urban life into a
structured, readable map, planners try to eliminate spontaneous actions
and informal practices that do not fit into their vision. Third, the city itself
becomes a kind of abstract, universal subject, similar to how Hobbes'
idea of the State centralized power. In this way, responsibilities and
identities once spread among different groups and individuals are now
attributed to the city as a whole, making it easier to manage and control.

However, this planned and controlled city has its limits. The effort to
organize everything also produces waste—both literal and social.
Poverty, inequality, and inefficiency emerge as byproducts of the system,
turning the city’s drive for productivity into a process of constant loss and
excess. Even as urban planning tries to integrate these issues back into
its system—treating problems like health and security as part of its
structure—it often ends up generating new contradictions. This drive for
efficiency also leads to myths about the city’s destruction, with urban
strategies often imagining radical transformations or complete renewal to
maintain order. In doing so, the focus on time—progress and
change—makes planners forget about space itself, which remains
uncontrolled in many ways. The city, then, functions as both a machine
and a symbol of modernity, constantly evolving but never fully under
control.

Despite its powerful image, this "Concept-city" is now in decline.

Although urban planning and political strategies still treat the city as a
unified system, the reality of urban life is becoming more unpredictable
and resistant to control. Cities no longer function as neatly planned
spaces but instead are shaped by countless everyday actions that defy
official structures. Power still tries to impose order, but urban life resists
in ways that cannot be easily monitored or regulated. Beneath the official
narratives about cities, informal and unregulated practices continue to
thrive, shaping the real experience of urban life.

Rather than seeing this as a crisis, it is possible to approach the city

differently—by studying the hidden, everyday practices that continue
despite attempts at control. These informal actions, from small daily
routines to creative uses of urban space, have not disappeared but
instead have adapted, growing in ways that evade surveillance. This
shift mirrors Michel Foucault’s idea that power operates through small,
detailed mechanisms of discipline, shaping spaces to control behavior.
However, just as power structures space, people also shape their
environment in ways that resist discipline. In today's cities, where
large-scale administration conflicts with individual reappropriation of
space, these hidden practices shape the social reality of urban life. By
focusing on these subtle, creative ways people use and navigate the city,
we can better understand how urban life functions beyond the official
structures of control.
The story of the city begins with footsteps—countless, unique
movements that shape urban spaces. These footsteps don’t follow a
strict pattern or form a measurable sequence. Instead, they create a
network of paths that connect places, shaping the city in ways that
cannot be fully captured on maps. While maps can record where people
have walked, they fail to capture the actual experience of walking—the
motion, choices, and personal meanings tied to each step. Turning these
movements into fixed points on a map erases the lived reality of walking,
replacing it with a simplified version that makes the city seem more
structured than it really is.

Walking, like language, has its own style and rhythm. Just as people
have different ways of speaking, they also have different ways of moving
through the city. Some follow familiar routes because of personal
connections to street names, while others avoid named streets because
they feel controlled by them. Street names, once meant to define places,
take on new meanings as people use them in personal ways. Over time,
these names become detached from their original purpose, transforming
into symbols that guide movement rather than simply labeling locations.
They create an invisible map of meanings that shape how people
navigate the city, much like stars guiding travelers.

However, as cities become more controlled and structured, the personal

and symbolic connections to places begin to fade. With modernization,
numbers replace names, and stories tied to places are erased. This loss
of local legends and shared narratives makes the city feel less alive,
reducing it to a functional space rather than a lived one. Without these
stories, urban spaces can feel empty and unremarkable, leaving people
with only their private homes as meaningful places.

Despite this, people still find ways to create meaning in the city. Walking
itself becomes a way to tell stories, replacing the legends that once gave
places their significance. Travel and movement become ways of making
sense of the world, allowing people to rediscover forgotten fragments of
history and culture. This process of wandering and storytelling helps
individuals reclaim urban space, filling it with new personal and collective
meanings. In this way, walking is not just a practical act but a creative
one, shaping the city in ways that maps and official narratives cannot
capture.