26.5.15

Pavement power

In this local town within Milton Keynes, we have a town walk.

I am not convinced, by the way, that the town walk has been installed for the benefit of tourists. I think it is here, like the community artist, to engage the residents with our own town; to help develop a sense of history, and engender shared values about preservation of heritage.

I wonder if, in its origins, planners and developers felt such a walk was needed when a highly mobile population became likely. We have an ethnic population of the town, largely Pakistani, who may come and go. Maybe the longer-term town residents felt it was right, under such circumstances, that the existing population communicated to a transitory population the message 'You may pass through, but you are entering a town with a history of its own. Look - we wrote our history on the pavement where you stand.' 

And indeed, the town walk does exert this curious sense of cohesion and obligation on me. I make my family walk along it once a year at a town event - it feels something like our responsibility and duty, performing our act of ordinary citizenship by this group acquiescence; this communal 'beating the bounds'.

In that way, the town walk may be working its sly and pretty pavement text-and-graphic power upon us citizens. (Probably not for the recently arrived populations, who may wonder what it's for.)

Anyway, we have a town walk. A 2.5 Km walk, guided by pavement markers taking us past buildings of historical or architectural note.


It starts (and ends) in a Victorian square, appropriately the traditional place of public assembly, memory of group endeavour, and a place of expectation of continuity. Here is the War Memorial, place where the town Christmas Tree is installed, and site of an annual brass band performance.



These are the markers which guide us and which do not carry text. When we reach a marker with text, we know we have reached a point of significance.



Here is significance through text: a marker of territory. It tells us where we are - it fixes us here, now, on this spot. It makes me stop my progress. Dutifully, obediently, I turn my head to look up, even though I'm very familiar with the tower the pavement text is referring to.

But if we are following the town walk, we are not to pass by! Indeed, this next pavement marker directly instructs me to LOOK OUT FOR...


By following the town walk faithfully, I could argue that it is an act almost of submission. I am agreeing to be a citizen of this town; I am choosing to accord to a viewpoint in which another has described my history and determined our territory. The text on the pavement tells me which building is interesting, and I am somehow bound to agree.

Departing from the town walk starts to feel almost like an act of rebellion.

So I'm concluding that this structured route is indeed about a 'town belonging'. The text is a significant territorial marker that reinforces my citizenship; it demands agreements and unities.

When I walk this route, for the duration of my progress I put aside all other more contradictory or subjective impulses - my need to tell other stories or argue which building is nicer or which site is older. As I marshal the family to complete this annual town walk tour, the only subversion acceptable is back-chat about the weather.

(And thank goodness we're only talking about the role of signage in the local town walk, and not our submission to the territorial-based ideology of the nation state!)


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