THE ART OF METROPOLITAN PATHS

For 20 years, long-distance walking routes in urban and rural environments peri-urban areas have emerged successively in Bordeaux, Milan, Marseille, Paris, Istanbul, London, Tunis, Avignon, Toulon, Liège, Charleroi, Cologne, Athens, Boston… Inheriting artistic approaches, the metropolitan trails are sustainable facilities, which claim an urban planning dimension. These collective works of artisanal urban planning are carried out by those who draw them, produce them, photograph them, survey them and tell. Alongside other social movements – such as agriculture urban or transitional urban planning – metropolitan hiking changes our ways of living. By allowing us to reconnect with physical space at the epicenter of the ecological crisis, these trails help to imagine the city post-oil.