Sense of Place Walk

this walk was done in conjunction with Sweet Auburn Works for their November engagement along Hilliard Street.

Through walking, observation, and discussion, participants attempted to better understand Sweet Auburn’s public realm, focusing on the Hilliard Street Corridor. The purpose of this walk was to reflect and imagine the public realm and its contextual, yet shared meanings.

Through experiential mapping I asked attendees engage with the present, past, and future of Hilliard St. Together we took the basic elements behind mapping (a visual diagram of space) and applied them to our experience and thoughts that day. Through experiential mapping we uncovered the layers that construct the everyday public realm and the context of place.

These layers included, but were not limited to: the importance of understanding site context (why are some spaces comfortable, nostalgic, “good”, “bad”, etc); understanding the development process and how to stay involved; how an individual can contribute to their public realm; unpacking why the Sweet Auburn District is valuable (how can the values found in Sweet Auburn apply to other parts of Atlanta?); What other unseen factors contribute to the Genius Loci or Sense of Place? How do we quantify/value/discuss these factors? Do we share them?

By providing public engagements with what spirit and infrastructure remain, it makes sense to include a celebration of why people ought to be interested in the first place. Hilliard St. was important for this walking engagement because it showcased a variety of development (old and new), and scale (from MARTA the pedestrian experience is lost and then regained as the streetscape narrows walking North). This variety in development and scale serves as a ground to provoke conversations on how development can tie into the loved and existing qualities of Sweet Auburn.

pictures provided by Sweet Auburn Works