Outside In
I put a picture on a wall. Then I forget there is a wall. I no longer know what there
is behind this wall. I no longer know there is a wall, I no longer knnow this wall is a
wall, I no longer know what a wall is.
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces
Dotted around the city are chowks, where roads cross and allow for spaces to be brought crossing. Each crossroads is at the centre of a neighbourhood; in fact, each crossing creates the neighbourhood around it. A neighbourhood is the place that you don’t have to go to in order to be there; open your front door, leave the house, and you’re in it already. Your neighbourhood is not described by an edge, or a wall, or even a park or river, together by walking between them. Intersections where, when you choose one of the paths and walk along it, you’ll come to another intersection – joining, with your walk, this crossing and that but expands or contracts to fill the area it needs to. In this case, the neighbourhood is the same size as the area of influence it has, relative to the position of crossing. Not that its an arbitrary distance that holds firm for all neighbourhoods – they can’t all be the same size, and you rarely know when you’re leaving one, until you arrive in the next one over. If you live closer to that crossroads, you’re in that neighbourhood; since I live closer to this one, I’m here. X, or, if you prefer, + marks the spot, the centre of my neighbourhood but never its edge. Instead of a circumscribing line neighbourhoods are limited by time. If it takes longer for me to get to that crossroads, chances are I’ll pick another one, belong to a different neighbourhood. Effort and distance describe the neighbourhood, how much I’m willing to exert myself to get to its centre. Gravity, if you like, weakening at the edges, if only we knew where they were. The space of the neighbourhood is defined from and by its middle, with limits left to take care of themselves and mutually define, liminal areas at its extremes where we’re neither here nor there. Defined, ultimately, by the perambulations of people, ‘locals’, sharing space and choosing the spaces they inhabit by their direction of movement.