A Part Of And Apart From

“For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures…”

--Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

To study a city requires one to become a flâneur.

The flâneur that Baudelaire writes of in The Painter of Modern Life is most precisely embodied by the likes of Vladimir Nabokov in Berlin, or Suketu Mehta in Mumbai. They are observant, passionate, semi-omniscient visitors to cities that are largely foreign to them, and in their aimless wanderings through the crowds, they imbue the observable city with retrospective insights.

But a flâneur is much better defined by a particular state of mind than by the conditions of his life. As such, the study of cities is not limited to only those who have the means or imperative to visit a foreign land, but rather is accessible to anyone with a mind that seeks to fathom the expanses of a city across space and time.