Author: Mark Wihak
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Shawn Micallef – Pedestrian
I had the pleasure of talking with Shawn Micallef about his book Stroll, Spacing magazine, and walking in Toronto. Shawn and I also recorded a walk in the neighbourhood around Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, an area familiar to both of us. Shawn lives south of Dufferin Grove Park, and I lived near the intersection…
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She Walks
Zoe Tehrani is the person behind the website She walks in England, an excellent source of information about walking, with details about routes, tips (e.g. 11 Tips For Hiking In The Rain And Wet Weather), and a blog. She also has an entertaining Instagram feed and a YouTube channel, which chronicle her walks.
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Walkable cities
The American Geographical Society published a story on the world’s most walkable cities, and the winner is Milan, Italy! Two cities Project Pedestrian has spent extensive time in, Lyon, France (5) and Genoa, Italy (9), are in the top ten and we can understand why, we loved walking in them. 45 of the world’s 50…
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Cardiff Walks
The Canadian artist Janet Cardiff works in a range of mediums, often in collaboration with her life partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff started creating audio walks in the 1990s. Designed for specific locales, the audio walks guide you along, in your headphones the sound of voices whispering, telling stories, giving directions, recorded sound fx blending…
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Wanderlust
The American writer Rebecca Solnit‘s 2001 Wanderlust: A History of Walking is an essential book for anyone interested in thinking about walking. “Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down.” Wanderlust is wide-ranging and…
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Waiting for a green Karl
The German city of Trier remembers its native son Karl Marx with a few transit signals near the street where he was born. Unlike where I live, pedestrians in Trier don’t need to press a “beg button” in order to get a green Karl, it’s a part of the regular cycle of lights. (Like Lyon,…
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Why Lyon?
I began gathering footage for Project Pedestrian in Lyon, France and one of the things that made me choose Lyon was the German film Die Reise nach Lyon (Blind Spot was its English title). Directed by Claudia von Alemann and released in 1981, the film stars Rebecca Pauly as Elisabeth, a young historian trying to…
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Lyon: A city designed for pedestrians
I started work on Project Pedestrian in March 2025 in a city I’d never been before: Lyon, France. I didn’t know much about Lyon before going there and that was the point. Walking is a good way to get to know a place, and I wanted to learn about Lyon by walking in it. It…
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Herzog & Chatwin
In the winter of 1974, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog walked from Munich to Paris in the hope that this would prevent the death of his friend, the film historian Lotte Eisner, who was seriously ill. “I set off…believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot.” It took Herzog three weeks to…
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The Songlines
An early influence on what is becoming Project Pedestrian is Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 book The Songlines, which made me think about walking as more than just a way to get from A to B. Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare writes about Chatwin and The Songlines. Michael Ignatieff interviewed Chatwin about The Songlines for Granta.
Project Pedestrian 