Please Follow Me: Revisiting the Guided Tour in Urban Studies

The 14th international 4Cities conference at the University of Copenhagen.

More than a way of communicating superficial knowledge to an audience of mass tourists, the genre of the guided tour resists and survives. In a time pervaded by smartphones and digital maps, it is intriguing to see how much ‘analog’ guided tours thrive within an environment of a Master’s program of urban studies like 4Cities.eu.

The basic elements of guided tours – a guide, an itinerary, places to stop, but also a combination of seeing, talking and bodily presence – reappear in multiple educational contexts from small site visits to larger excursions. In informal situations, too, the format of the guided tour soon takes over, when staff or students show their home cities to non-locals. Finally, the guided tour is a dominant genre when alternative voices unfold conflictual perspectives in urban reality.

What is the role of guided tours in urban studies at the age of 4Cities?

What are the potentials of this mainstream genre for a critical exploration of urban realities and imaginaries?

May variations on the guided tour promote new didactic and scholarly approaches?

Speakers

• Martin Zerlang (Copenhagen): Guidebooks: Walking and Writing
• Diego Barrado Timon (Madrid): It isn’t Tourism, but about Tourism: While Others Are Having Fun in Urban Space
• Elien Stouten & Daniel Viana Santos (4Cities): Meeting at the Crossroads: Walking Tours as Urban Analytical Tools
• Mathieu Van Criekingen (Brussels): Crossing the City to Cross Time
• Henrik Reeh (Copenhagen): Glimpses of Memory, Chunks of Text: Moving and Thinking Together
• Walter Matznetter (Vienna): »Show Me Your Place, and I’ll Show You Mine« – Invitations to the Self-Guided Tour

Contact: Henrik Reeh, reeh@hum.ku.dk