Picture this

Thanks to a fascinating academic meeting this week about ‘researching contemporary communities,’ I was directed to this striking image based on shopkeepers’ countries of origin. It comes from an ethnographic study of the Walworth Road in south London, carried out by Suzanne Hall, an architect. The illustration is dated 2006. It neatly captures what Doreen Massey meant by a ‘global sense of place’.

I like this particularly because of the immediacy of the story it tells. Rather like Donald Appleyard’s famous (1981) drawings of local social interactions on ‘light traffic street’ and ‘heavy traffic street,’ you get the message straight away, and it confirms what you are already likely to know, so it’s more reassuring than thought-provoking or challenging.

 

Comments

[Suzanne Hall]

Hi Kevin,

I am delighted you like the local-global map of the Walworth Road. We are now working on further visualisations of Peckham Rye Lane, I'm pasting in a link for you:
http://lsecities.net/objects/research-projects/ordinary-streets

Best wishes,
Suzi Hall

[Kevin Harris]

Thanks Suzi - really looking forward to hearing more about this work. I've added a link to the blogroll.