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Category Archives: Reading Cities, Sensing Cities

“Opening One’s Eyes” to What It is Like Sensing a City Blind

Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures.


September 18, 2014
Reading the City as a Blind Person
Chris Downey, Architect and Georgina Kleege, Department of English

Presentation available here.
Video of the conversation available here.
Downey and Kleege spoke on their experiences navigating cities as a blind person, with perspectives shaped by their professional backgrounds.


By Matthew Goodman

What would you say makes a city livable? You might list a couple of key attributes – walkable, diverse, safe, to name a few. Frankly, it’s pretty difficult to clearly define what makes a city livable…sometimes you just “know it when you see it.”

Well, what if you couldn’t see it? This question lay at the heart of this week’s lecture “Reading Cities as a Blind Person” by Chris Downey and Georgina Kleege. Downey and Kleege, both blind, articulately expressed how they experience cities and how their experiences may be similar or different from those of sighted people. Nowhere in the lecture did either speaker ask for pity or campaign for more specialized means to better assist blind people in navigating urban environments. Instead, they have figured out a way to immerse themselves in cities, keying in on their surroundings by using senses besides sight. This may seem difficult to the sighted, given 80% of our sensory input comes through vision.



Image source: bestlifemistake.blogspot.com


When the sighted walk through and navigate a city, according to Kleege, they do so directionally, more specifically forwardly. Ear buds in, many people drown out surrounding noise and keep their eyes fixed straight ahead towards their destination. Kleege and Downey do not have that same ability, so their means of navigating and experiencing cities are different. Their journeys are multisensory, relying heavily on sounds not just in front of them, but all around them. Kleege mentioned that the blind move keeping in mind their spherical surroundings, where sensory inputs from all directions are important. The result is a more immersive, less directionally linear experience.

I opened the blog with the idea of making a city livable, something urban planners (full disclosure: I’m not one!) study and hopefully glean ideas to implement. My most interesting takeaway from today’s lecture was that the same things that make a city livable for a blind person make it livable for a sighted person. Activity and vibrancy on the sidewalk, proper scaling of streets, and accessibility for pedestrians are all things mentioned by Kleege that make a city livable for her specifically…if you’d have asked the same thing of a sighted person, I’d expect they’d list similar characteristics. Kleege mentioned that two cities she’s lived in – New York and Paris – were particularly livable for these reasons, a sentiment largely shared by people who experience and sense these cities very differently than she does.

For lack of a better term, this week’s lecture “opened my eyes” to what it is like sensing a city blind. While navigating a city may be challenging without sight, both Kleege and Downey taught me that experiencing a city without it can be highly immersive and meaningful.

Relating to this topic, a few articles I found of interest:

Matthew Goodman is pursuing an MBA at the Haas School of Business.


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. September 18, 2014 Reading the City as a Blind Person Chris Downey, Architect and Georgina Kleege, Department of English Presentation available here. Video of the conversation available here. Downey and Kleege spoke on their experiences navigating cities as a blind person, with perspectives shaped by their professional backgrounds. By Jaime Gómez In 1945 the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote “The Aleph,” a short story describing a man who spent…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. September 18, 2014 Reading the City as a Blind Person Chris Downey, Architect and Georgina Kleege, Department of English Presentation available here. Video of the conversation available here. Downey and Kleege spoke on their experiences navigating cities as a blind person, with perspectives shaped by their professional backgrounds. By Robyn Perry Those who attended Georgina Kleege and Chris Downey’s talk on reading cities without sight received a rare gift on…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. September 18, 2014 Reading the City as a Blind Person Chris Downey, Architect and Georgina Kleege, Department of English Presentation available here. Video of the conversation available here. Downey and Kleege spoke on their experiences navigating cities as a blind person, with perspectives shaped by their professional backgrounds. By Swetha Vijayakumar The story that instinctively comes to mind when thinking of blind people navigating spaces is the tale of the…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. September 18, 2014 Reading the City as a Blind Person Chris Downey, Architect and Georgina Kleege, Department of English Presentation available here. Video of the conversation available here. Downey and Kleege spoke on their experiences navigating cities as a blind person, with perspectives shaped by their professional backgrounds. By Jon Pitt If the navigation of a city is a narrative movement, a linear progression from point A to point B,…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. On September 11, 2014, Lauren Kroiz spoke about Berkeley—The City and Its People, a mural by Romare Bearden that once hung in Berkeley City Hall, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, and is now indefinitely in storage. She asked viewers to consider the intentions of the city leaders of 1973 in inviting a well-known African-American artist from the East Coast to portray their city. Kroiz is Assistant Professor…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. On September 11, 2014, Lauren Kroiz spoke about Berkeley—The City and Its People, a mural by Romare Bearden that once hung in Berkeley City Hall, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, and is now indefinitely in storage. She asked viewers to consider the intentions of the city leaders of 1973 in inviting a well-known African-American artist from the East Coast to portray their city. Kroiz is Assistant Professor…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures. On September 11, 2014, Lauren Kroiz spoke about Berkeley—The City and Its People, a mural by Romare Bearden that once hung in Berkeley City Hall, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, and is now indefinitely in storage. She asked viewers to consider the intentions of the city leaders of 1973 in inviting a well-known African-American artist from the East Coast to portray their city. Kroiz is Assistant Professor…


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Posted on by Susan Moffat

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures.  On September 4, 2014, Darin Jensen invited listeners to consider the narrative and spatial aspects of two experiential mapping projects he created with his students: Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas about San Francisco's Mission District, and Intranational International Boulevard about Oakland. Jensen is staff cartographer and lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography. His presentation is available here. Video of the first portion of his presentation is available here. By Scott Elder While not…


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Posted on by Genise Choy

As part of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Colloquium called Reading Cities, Sensing Cities, we have asked students and visitors to write responses to each of the weekly guest lectures.  On September 4, 2014, Darin Jensen invited listeners to consider the narrative and spatial aspects of two experiential mapping projects he created with his students: Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas about San Francisco's Mission District, and Intranational International Boulevard about Oakland. Jensen is staff cartographer and lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography. His presentation is available here. Video of the first portion of his presentation is available here.…