From bodily gestures to broader cultures of urban mobility, movement shapes public life in complex ways, but it is often understood within urban design and engineering as a set of flows, measured and managed quantitatively. Ideas from choreography can help to expand this vision, offering ways to imagine and design for a wider set of possible ways of moving, whilst spaces and cultures of dance are microcosms of the politics of movement and bodily interaction. These pieces of work show how choreographic thinking can expand the tools for staging movement in cities.

Whilst transformations to mobility infrastructures are the most obvious driver of changes to urban mobility cultures, green infrastructures also shape culturally the ways we move and encounter one another, as my work on histories of movement and queer presence in relation to tree planting in Paris has shown. Furthermore, I am developing walking as a method for research and teaching on urban ecologies, both in the form of longer-distance hikes and the enactment of walking and listening scores. These creative ways of moving allow us to notice how new urban greening is transforming the spatial choreographies of public life.