City Lenses is a group that reads books about the city and then runs through it. The vision of the city while running is unique: closer and more intimate than via vehicle, your perspectives altered by endorphins and focus-driven seclusion. Our goal is to use this particular lens as a starting point for the critical exploration of our urban environment.

Our facebook group, which is going to be the main organization point until I have time to build out this site, is Here
You can follow me on twitter at @Readywater, and I'll be posting about the runs, links, updates, etc.

Thanks for your interest!

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June 4, 2011 - City Lenses runs the Invisible City
We've read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and will be running through a variety of different neighborhoods and zones, starting at one of Toronto's oldest streets. The route is here: gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4552410
Hope to see everyone at the bottom of Draper and Front.


June 18, 2011 - City Lenses runs The Image of the City
Kevin Lynch's Image of the City is an analysis of city form and function, formulating a theory around its design and development. Lynch's analysis was around LA, Boston, and Jersey city: let's apply what he's learned in understanding Toronto.
This 5-6k run will take us through the paths, edges, nodes, landmarks, and districts of our city, and we'll see where Toronto fits in to and challenges our model of what a city is.


July 2, 2011 - City Lenses runs through walls
Boundaries around public space and private place are a primary material consideration when working with designing movement within the city. Walls and windows, barriers natural and artificial define these boundaries both physically and metaphorically, weaving themselves in to our understanding of the city and what the city can do as a porous system.
This run will look at the space between spaces, understanding how it can facilitate movement and creation, and where we can move outside the boundaries the built and psychological environment provide us.

Design of Design chap 16: Representing Design's Trajectories and Rationales
Eyal Weizman's Walking through walls: Soldiers as architects in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (thanks to Border Town )
BLDGBLOG's interview with Michael Cook


July 23rd, 2011 - CityLenses runs through Breach
The borders between different images of the city are built, legislated and emergent. We exist in our city as both its maker and its product, constantly rewriting the city to ourselves while desperately limited by its influence.
China Mieville's book, The City and the City, explores the creation of city borders and their maintenance through education, convention, legislation, and fear.
We'll run a route exploring psychological borders: where is it comfortable, where is it not, what do we see, and what do we skip over? Is the city we see really our city at all?

China Mieville The City & The City