Exploring the changing texture of the city

I use Edinburgh to illustrate how the textural qualities of urban spaces and how individually recorded experiences of these spaces can be combined to create a collective texture of the city in motion. The premise is that the city, a world heritage site, is not a static environment, but an organism that is alive and made of surfaces, textures and people that are continually changing. It is in this constantly shifting space that the sense of place is created, both in the physical and in the digital realm. Places within the city are approached as being a continuum of present unique moments collected by visitors and inhabitants through the recording devices that they have at hand. These devices serve as memory aid tools, and collect the invisible traces that people leave when moving in the environment. I draw on phenomenology to reflect on the texture of the city, and examine Eric Fisher’s map “Locals and Tourists #19,” the mobile phone application for Scottish historical maps “Walking Through Time,” the Edinburgh City Council Library “Capital Collections” and the National Library of Scotland maps collection to illustrate how the texture of the city of Edinburgh has changed from individually collected perspectives to collective maps. People record the changing texture of the city through maps and images, and construct a collectively mediated experience of being and place. Whilst the amount of

information that is collected contributes to the complexity of the texture of the city, it also brings up the issue of how to preserve the records that show the changing texture of the city.