Landscape Surgery: Literary Geographies

I originally wrote and published this post on the Landscape Surgery blog of the Social, Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Landscape Surgery is a fortnightly seminar series that the SCHG hosts during term-time. Sessions are typically organised around a theme for which speakers (including external invitees) talk about their research, followed by questions/general discussion on the topic; though it can also include workshops and research training sessions. I attend the sessions as part of my PhD activities, and am one of four editors of the Landscape Surgery blog.

The session discussed in this post was organised around the theme of 'Literary Geographies'. Thanks to Alice Reynolds and Megan Harvey for editing this post.

------------------------------------------------

Our third Landscape Surgery of the autumn term discussed the topic of Literary Geographies, with presentations from three of the department’s visiting scholars: Nattie Golubov (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Lucrezia Lopez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) and Giada Peterle (University of Padua). Each presenter discussed the ways in which their research has engaged with different forms of literature, and what their individual methodologies can contribute to geographical study. This was followed by a panel discussion that grappled more broadly with what encounters between literature and geographical inquiry can achieve.

Our presenters in discussion during the session

Our first speaker on the day, Nattie Golubov, has been a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at UNAM since 1995, having taught widely on English literature, literary and cultural theory. Her research engages in the critical study of a variety of types of American texts, to understand how relationships between diverse groups of people in the US are expressed culturally.

Nattie began by highlighting how academic literature on migration has tended to view the process from perspectives of postcolonialism, diaspora and exile, while focusing disproportionately on the point of departure and the point of arrival. Using Teju Cole’s (2017) book Blind Spot as a point of reference, she explained how literary approaches to the topic of migration can be fruitful for scholarship on this subject, with stories in the form of novels and other texts being able to evoke thetranslocal (relationships between specific locations within countries, not just between countries); complicate the binaries of nomadic/sedentary and centre/periphery which have characterised existing migration scholarship; and foster critical reflection on the geographies of where texts on migration are written, published, read and translated.

In her current research, Nattie has been examining contemporary US romance literature that tells stories about American soldiers in Afghanistan. What she finds interesting about these texts, she explained, is how the subject matter of the stories is at once heavily geopolitical, yet grounded in the ‘normal’ and everyday. While the locations portrayed by the novels can lead to an awareness of the planetary, this is typically foregrounded by familiar tropes of small-town America and the space of the house/home.

With romance being a very popular genre that is widely read in the US – especially by women – this can render the representations used in the novels problematic, notably through the sometimes shocking language that describes places in the Global South. Nattie gave the example of one location being referred to as the ‘armpit of the world’; while simultaneously the novels perpetuate a fantasy of whiteness and enclosure in these territories.

Nattie’s work is seeking to ask what it is about the ‘normal’ that is so attractive and tenacious in literature. And in turn, what kinds of (geographical) relationships do these novels forge with the reader? Can they produce a new type of sociality around the topic of migration?

Our second presenter was Lucrezia Lopez, whose research explores practices of tourism, heritage and religious expression by investigating how they are represented and interpreted culturally. Her current research, titled in this presentation as ‘The Contemporary Spaces of the Way of St. James’, studies the travel diaries of those sharing their experiences of pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago.

Lucrezia started by outlining how literature, cinema and the internet are contributing to a new spatial discourse of the Camino de Santiago; reinforcing the notion that there are multiple ‘Caminos’ articulated by the different artists and writers who represent it.

Travel diaries in particular are a relatively new method people are using to share their experiences of travelling on the Camino, reflecting a broader turn in the literature towards exploring the internaljourneys of pilgrims taking part. Lucrezia identified two trends within the travel diaries’ representations of walking the Camino: neo-romanticism, reflecting the aesthetic value of travel diaries in conveying emotions/feelings and representing an idyllic rural landscape; and neo-realism, reflecting the testimonial value of travel diaries in drawing attention to traffic, waste and issues of sustainability on the Camino.

As for the act of writing itself, Lucrezia has found that a concept of liminality or ‘in-between’ space is expressed through practices of documenting the pilgrimage using travel diaries. The process of writing about the landscape in this way is believed to cultivate a different sense of self; a cathartic, therapeutic and/or spiritual practice that is part of the pilgrimage. However, some of these writers have been exploring this intimacy using alternative forms of representation than just text. Lucrezia referred to the comic book On the Camino by Norwegian artist Jason (2017), and how his use of images portrays the practice of pilgrimage on the Camino using popular visual tropes of the solitary thinking walker, bridges, and rural landscapes.

Ultimately, Lucrezia located three spaces through which the travel diaries operate: the space of the reader, the subjective space of the pilgrim/author, and the physical space of the Camino itself. How the Camino is imagined is a product of the work that varying forms of representation (e.g. comic book versus text) do in these spaces, alongside the personal discourses that are performed through individual practices of writing, reading and walking.

With wider relevance for thinking about methodology within literary geographies, Lucrezia finished by speaking about some of the challenges she has faced while studying travel diaries for her research. Which sources do you choose to consult, which do you leave, and why? Which academic research should be consulted, amongst the wide range of scholarship on the Camino? And could examining this kind of literature for research be a ‘leading’ methodology, privileging the researcher’s own interpretations of the texts?

Our final speaker was Giada Peterle, a post-doctoral research fellow and lecturer whose work is creative and interdisciplinary, bringing a range of narrative forms to her academic study within geography to think about the ways we understand, shape and represent the places we inhabit. Her current project is titled ‘Urban Literary Geographies: Mapping the city through narrative interpretation and creative practice’.

Giada’s presentation started by situating her work within a wider trajectory of creative geographies. She charted how the dialogical exchange between geographical and literary theory, as well as an existing and ongoing reciprocal exchange between place and literature, has been an important influence within the recent creative (re)turn in geography (e.g. Hawkins 2013; Madge, 2014). As well as fostering interdisciplinarity, this scholarship has approached storytelling not just as a form of representation, but as a creative practice to engage with, in which the embodied experiences of academics themselves can inform research.

Giada illustrated how her work has entered the domain of creative practice through Street Geography, a collaborative project between several geographers at the University of Padua with Progetto Giovani (based in the Office of the Municipality of Padua), which aims to encourage dialogue between academic research, art practice, and Padua citizens in an effort to contribute to the conceptualisation and realisation of more meaningful and sustainable cities. Street Geographybrought together three geographers and three artists to create three site-specific exhibitions in Padua that question the ways people live in cities, as well as the significance of change, movement and relationships in shared urban spaces.

This presentation concentrated on one of these site-specific exhibitions, A station of stories: moving narrations, which was undertaken in Padua railway station. Giada recounted how the project team wanted this site-specific work to reflect the varied mobilities and stories that the station embodies, as an environment of co-presence and contradictions: between transit and encounter, consumption and dwelling, work and criminality, encounter and exclusion.

This conceptual approach led to an idea of the material space of the station itself being a narrator. Using this tactic in their writing, the team aimed to provoke empathy with the place; challenging anthropocentric understandings of the station by imagining the site telling stories of its own changing environment from a non-human perspective. In turn, the team hoped to enable readers to think about how, when and on what terms different stories of the city are told. This latter objective was especially relevant as most of the station’s spaces are normally used for advertising. How could these spaces be appropriated to encourage people to think critically about the station as a confluence of diverse stories?

The team’s answer was to use the comic book form. As a type of literature that is easy to read and accessible, but also quite mobile in how it is read, using comics took into account the different entry points and directions of movement from which the story could be approached and interpreted in the station. This depth of engagement was facilitated by the comic’s physical presence as a public art exhibition; though the physicality of the comic panels also brought practical challenges. Giada recalled finding all the exhibition panels face down on the ground only the morning after mounting them for display, and consequently having to change the way they were stuck up. The team were also concerned that members of the public writing on the panels might obscure the material shown.

In the end, the physical positioning of the panels in the station successfully engaged diverse audiences of academics, travellers and residents through a series of intentional and accidental encounters with the artwork. Creative geographical approaches such as those adopted in Street Geography, Giada contended, demonstrate how encounters between geography and art can engage wider communities with the discipline, by seeing it as a creative approach towards understanding spaces that incorporates their materialities and affects, as well as the personal experiences of researchers.

The three presentations were followed by a panel discussion, which picked up on points of crossover between Nattie, Lucrezia and Giada’s work.

In a conversation on what the spatial perspective of geography can offer literature, our presenters considered the complex relationship between ‘real’ physical spaces and how they are represented in fiction. They reflected on how geographical approaches and (creative) methodologies that investigate the spaces of readers, writers and publishers, such as Innes Keighren’s work on geographies of the book (e.g. Keighren, 2013), can attend to the ways in which literary representations of space are implicated within the wider social, political and material processes through which different literatures are produced and consumed.

It was also suggested that the themes of mobility and non-linearity within geographical thought can help with understanding how the form of a text interacts with the way its geographies are experienced by the work’s creators and readers. Our presenters concurred that such experiences of literature have become increasingly non-linear, through both the unique and interactive forms of consumption that digital technology enables, as well as postmodernist trends in literature that have sought to think beyond linear constructions of narrative.

Thank you to all three of our presenters for sharing some fascinating insights from their research, and for all they have contributed as visiting scholars to our research community in the Social, Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group during their time at Royal Holloway.

Lucrezia Lopez, Nattie Golubov and Giada Peterle

Bibliography

Cole, T. (2017) Blind Spot. London: Faber & Faber.

Hawkins, H. (2013) “Geography and art: An expanding field: Site, the body, and practice” Progress in Human Geography 37(1): 52-71.

Jason (2017) On the Camino. Seattle: Fantagraphics.

Keighren, I.M. (2013) Geographies of the book: review and prospect. Geography Compass 7(11): 745-758.

Madge, C. (2014) “On the creative (re)turn to geography: poetry, politics and passion” Area 46(2): 178-185.

Objection to the proposed development at Highland Court Farm

Photograph of orchards at Highland Court Farm by Mike Sole

This is somewhat different content to what I've been posting in recent months, detailing some of the activist work I've been doing alongside my academic and artistic projects. For the past year I've been a committee member of Barham Downs Action Group, a campaign local to where I live in Kent against the proposed development of land around Highland Court Farm, which lies within the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The proposed development by Quinn Estates would build over existing high-quality farmland and orchards by constructing 175 luxury holiday homes, an expanded business park, a 'food and drink' hub and sports facilities for Canterbury City Football Club and Canterbury Rugby Club. The planning application for this development was finally submitted in September, which gave local people the opportunity to submit comments on the plans to the Planning Department at Canterbury City Council. The Planning team then makes a recommendation to the council as to whether the plans should be approved or rejected. Here I'm posting the objection to the proposed development that I submitted to the Planning Department.

------------------------------------------------------------------.

I wish to object absolutely to the proposed development at Highland Court, as a resident in the neighbouring parish of Adisham. My objection is founded on the proposed development’s incompatibility with the site’s status as being located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and outside the scope of the recently-adopted Local Plan, alongside concerns about transport sustainability, impact on culture and heritage, agriculture and wildlife.

Local Plan and AONB

The Local Plan adopted by Canterbury City Council only a short time ago in July 2017, which identifies the council’s strategic areas for development – of which Highland Court is not one – aims to “provide certainty for local people, developers and others about planning decisions for the area.” Under ‘What are we trying to achieve’, the plan states it is aiming to “[p]rotect sensitive landscape and wildlife areas, and other key environmental assets such as the World Heritage Site, the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Conservation Areas.” By these standards alone, this development could reasonably be rejected outright by CCC.

AONBs themselves rightly have some of the most stringent restrictions for major developments, which according to the National Planning Policy Framework should only be considered if the proposals raise issues of ‘national significance’. Considerations must include the need for the development, the cost and scope for developing elsewhere outside the designated area, and the detrimental effect on environment and landscape.

The Highland Court proposals fall short at every stage of these checks. The proposed development is not of national significance. There is little demand nationally for self-build holiday homes located in countryside several miles away from Canterbury city centre, as evidenced by the Destination Management Plan commissioned this year by Canterbury Connected Business Improvement District, which emphasised that the city centre – and in particular its UNESCO World Heritage Site – are the locations most in need of accommodation in order to add value to Canterbury’s visitor economy. As for the sports facilities, Canterbury City Football Club plays in Tier 5 of the National League (tier 9 of the English football system), and only one of their home games this season has seen an attendance above 100 people.  Canterbury City Rugby Football Club fares somewhat better in the fourth tier of English rugby (National League 2 South), however unlike the football club, they already benefit from spacious grounds in Canterbury and have 16 more years on their lease. Given this context, a development that would house these clubs cannot be deemed ‘nationally significant’.

The development is not needed in this location. Highland Court consists of agricultural land which does not form part of an existing settlement, which would contradict Policy TV8 of the Local Plan, which states: “Where tourism attractions and facilities are proposed in new buildings, the Council will ensure that the new development is related to an existing settlement and is not isolated in the open countryside so as to have an adverse impact upon its character and appearance. This should also improve the proposal in sustainability terms and reduce the need for travelling by car.” The nearest villages of Bridge, Patrixbourne, Bishopsbourne are not convenient to access from the site without a short car trip; and as has already been established, Canterbury city centre is several miles away. If the developers are claiming to serve the needs of Canterbury’s sportspeople, residents and visitor economy, this cannot be considered an appropriate location for such a development.

As for the detrimental effect on the environment and landscape of the locality, these considerations will now be discussed by focusing in turn on the specific issues of traffic and sustainability, pollution, cultural heritage, agriculture and wildlife.                                   

Sustainability of transport

The positioning of the development close to the A2, detached from any existing settlement, and without easy access to adequate public transport facilities (the nearest bus stop is located at least a 15-minute walk from the vast majority of the development site, along a road which inclines towards Highland Court) means that, realistically, the vast majority of users of the site will be accessing this development using personal motor vehicles. For households such as mine, which are based in nearby rural areas but do not own cars, the siting of this development would effectively exclude us from easily accessing the site’s proposed facilities on a regular basis.

Additionally, The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE)’s ‘Sustainability Scorecard’ associated with this planning application, which indicates the development’s conformity to the NPPF’s definition of sustainable development, marks ‘Disagree’ for Statement 7: “The proposals provide the opportunity for users/occupiers to walk to essential facilities either within or outside of the site.” This is a worrying independent assessment, considering the Local Plan’s emphasis in Policy T1 on “[p]roviding alternative modes of transport to the car by extending provision for pedestrians, cyclists and the use of public transport.” The argument in the Environmental Non-Technical Summary associated with this application that the proposed development ‘doesn’t worsen existing public rights of way’ and will have a ‘neutral’ effect on non-vehicular access is therefore unacceptable, as currently the vast majority of users of the site access it by car.

The developers themselves acknowledge the necessity of car travel to the site in their emphasis on the claim that the nearby junction off the A2 is ‘underused’, and hence could apparently cope with a higher volume of motor vehicles; and also through the number of car parking spaces they propose to have on the site – 1430 (compared to 157 cycle spaces). Yet this ‘underused junction’ argument is itself dubious, considering that Highways England, in their comment on this application, have suggested the junction will be “operating above operating capacity and very close to theoretical capacity,” and could therefore impact on queueing traffic on the A2 mainline.

One element of the traffic argument that has not often been remarked upon is the quantity of vehicles that will be required to maintain the site’s essential functions, not just those used to transport users of the site. This would include large lorries and vans for deliveries every day, as well as those needed to remove waste from the site. It cannot be considered safe or appropriate for these vehicles to share the narrow roads surrounding the site with cyclists, walkers crossing the roads between footpaths (or braving the journey along the road to the nearest bus stop), horse riders and the other motor vehicles travelling to and from the site.

Safety would also be compromised by the volume of vehicular traffic. It has been projected by Quinn Estates’ consultants that, on a Saturday morning, a vehicle would arrive or leave the Highland Court site every 3 seconds. In the Development Summary submitted as part of this application, it is stated in paragraph 4.6 that “[t]he primary route for vehicular, pedestrian and cycle access into the site for both the detailed and outline components of the application will be via Coldharbour Lane.” This means that, on a Saturday morning, a cyclist cycling for three minutes down Coldharbour Lane could expect to encounter 60 vehicles, or a pedestrian walking for 15 minutes (e.g. from the nearest bus stop) would encounter 300 vehicles on the road. Given that improving road safety is one of the five key aims of the Canterbury District Transport Action Plan, and Policies EMP14 and TV8 of the Local Plan highlight that new development can only be permitted if “the use does not significantly increase traffic to the detriment of the [rural] area or highway safety”, this development’s impact on the use of the local transport infrastructure could not be deemed acceptable.

Pollution

At a meeting at Adisham Village Hall on 1^st October 2018, Mark Quinn of Quinn Estates acknowledged that there would be an overall increase in the light that would be emitted from the Highland Court site, if the proposed development were to go ahead.

Given the existing, well-documented problems with unnecessarily bright lights shining across the downs from the current farm/business park buildings, the addition of floodlights extending 15 metres into the air from the sports pitches will add another source of visible artificial light that would be seen for miles around, disturbing both the nearby human and animal populations (migration, foraging, feeding and breeding patterns). Furthermore, for astronomers in the vicinity (stargazing is a factor people frequently consider when deciding to live in a rural locale such as ours) this light pollution would significantly hinder opportunities to take part in their practice. No amount of buffering from trees can prevent artificial light from radiating upwards, minimising the dark sky conditions necessary to view many stars. Entran’s Non-Technical Environmental Summary for this application acknowledges this as an adverse impact of the development: “The major residual visual effects of the presence of new lighting is the increase in night time sky glow when viewed beyond the Site boundary and the sport pitch lighting when in operation.” All this would occur in a site that lies within an E1 ‘Intrinsically dark area’ under the Institute of Lighting Engineers’ ‘Guidance Notes for the Reduction of Light Pollution, 2000’.

Noise pollution is an issue that residents local to Highland Court and recreational users of the site are already acutely aware of. There have recently been numerous complaints made to Canterbury City Council by nearby residents about the noise emanating from The Night Yard business on the site, past the hours dictated in their licence conditions. With the vast expansion in the activities taking place and people using the Highland Court site, this pollution would be compounded by sounds created by the increase in car and HGV traffic that would accompany the running of the site, the vehicles and machinery used while it is under construction, the activities of the businesses opening in the food and drink hub and extended business park, and the already ever-present background noise of the nearby A2 motorway. Undoubtedly this cacophony would be fundamentally detrimental to the tranquil character of this segment of the AONB.

Culture and heritage

The NPPF outlines the importance of planning decisions considering the impact of development on the significance of heritage assets. Paragraph 132 states “[w]hen considering the impact of a proposed development on the significance of a designated heritage asset, great weight should be given to the asset’s conservation. The more important the asset, the greater the weight should be. Significance can be harmed or lost through alteration or destruction of the heritage asset or development within its setting. As heritage assets are irreplaceable, any harm or loss should require clear and convincing justification. Substantial harm to or loss of a grade II listed building, park or garden should be exceptional” (my emphases).

Even a cursory glance at the Heritage Maps for the Highland Court area on the KCC website with all the layers turned on indicates the rich historic importance of the site, and this is remarked upon in the archaeology report produced by Canterbury Archaeological Trust, appended to this planning application. Within the designated conservation area of ‘Highland Court’, the orchards that the developers would seek to replace have a historic landscape characterisation of type 3.1, and the open fields with straight boundaries (parliamentary-type enclosure), which would also be altered beyond recognition, have a historic landscape characterisation of type 1.10. Additionally, the site is home to a 2* listed building, marked on the Heritage Maps as ‘Highland Court Hospital’, but formerly (and locally) known as Higham House. The proposed development would markedly impact on the building’s tranquil rural setting, as not only would it be lit up when it is dark by the 15-metre floodlights, but it would also be surrounded by noise from vehicle traffic, sports training and matches, and other activities on-site. Under paragraph 123 of the NPPF, planning decisions should aim to “identify and protect areas of tranquillity which have remained relatively undisturbed by noise and are prized for their recreational and amenity value for this reason.” Higham House, and public rights of way within the Highland Court conservation area, are locations to which this applies.

The area within the boundaries of the proposed development site is rich with archaeological features of protected status: ring ditches parallel to the original Roman road; a Bronze Age barrow; Iron Age pits and ditches; and a prehistoric settlement, suggested to date back to the Iron Age but containing evidence of worked flints from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Ages. The potential significance of this site to heritage is underlined by the fact that, in 2011, Canterbury Archaeological Trust carried out a watching brief over it. In addition, there are significant archaeological interests that remain uninvestigated on the site (through desk-based or field-based research) such as potential remains of the medieval settlement of Higham. As the archaeological report produced by CAT for this planning application concludes, “archaeological remains of at least regional and perhaps national significance may be extant within the proposed development area.” Paragraph 9.35 of the Local Plan makes clear that archaeological sites as well as listed buildings and landscape features “often contribute to the special character of conservation areas.” With Higham House, the regionally/nationally significant archaeological remains and historic landscape characterisations, the detrimental, irrevocable impacts this development would have on Highland Court’s physical heritage are an important reason why this planning application should be rejected.

Paragraph 137 of the NPPF explains that proposals which “preserve those elements of the setting that make a positive contribution to or better reveal the significance of the asset should be treated favourably,” yet the developers have not outlined how they will achieve this for the Grade II listed Higham House, nor the archaeological remains present in the land. Yet clearly the proposed development will at least harm these assets through the alteration of their setting, and even lead to complete loss in the case of the archaeological remains. Indeed, Entran’s Non-Technical Environmental Statement considers the residual effect on archaeological heritage assets to be adverse even after mitigation, which would purely consist of “preservation by record and appropriate publication of the results” – wholly inadequate for remains of regional and potentially national significance.

The North Downs Way that crosses the development site is an ancient pilgrimage route, which forms part of the Via Francigena linking with Rome and a wider network of historic pilgrimage routes across Europe (used by Archbishop Segeric as far back as 990 AD). If travelling from the Dover direction, the development site is very close to the first point at which users of the path enter the Kent Downs AONB. So the first impression we would be giving visitors from the UK and abroad is that our concept of maintaining ‘natural beauty’ is to irrevocably alter the character and appearance of a protected landscape that is designated as a conservation area and ‘nationally significant’.

One tactic used by the developers in an attempt to mitigate the concerns of those who use the local public rights of way is to plant lines of ‘tree buffers’ around the business park, innovation centre, and sports grounds. Aside from the fact that these trees would take decades to grow fully and obscure the buildings, this practice would ultimately entail a drastic change in the appearance of the AONB land when the trees are fully grown. Users of the North Downs Way, as well as the public rights of way that cross over the proposed development sites, enjoy the appearance of this land because its character is rooted in the natural beauty of rolling chalk downs. It would be unacceptable for this character to be spoilt by obstacles placed artificially, whether they’re buildings or neatly-planted trees.

Entran’s Non-Technical Environmental Summary also acknowledges that there will be “some significant adverse landscape and visual effects during construction and on completion”, and names the public bridleway within and adjacent to the development site – widely used by myself and other local residents for recreational walking and horse-riding – as one location where the development will result in these adverse impacts on landscape and visual amenity.

Consideration should also be made of the fact that Highland Court and its surroundings are a site of literary heritage. Writing shortly after World War 2, Jocelyn Brooke from neighbouring Bishopsbourne wrote a series of highly-acclaimed semi-autobiographical novels which describe his childhood spent exploring Barham Downs and the Elham Valley. Of particular significance in his works are stories of his walks from Bishopsbourne to what he calls ‘Coldharbour Farm’ until he reached the ‘watertower’ in Adisham woods. Walking along the footpaths Brooke used today, there is very little visible change to the character of the land since the time Brooke was writing about in his work (around WW1), apart from the expansion of the existing farming activities. The continuing popularity and cultural relevance of Brooke’s novels was emphasised recently by their re-publication by Bello in October 2017. The arrival of 175 incongruously large holiday homes, an expanded business park, food and drink hub and sports facilities would severely threaten the character of the very landscape that provides such an enchanting bucolic backdrop to this literary heritage.

Perhaps the most significant indictment of this development’s approach to culture and heritage lies with the CSE’s independent ‘Sustainability Scorecard’ for the development, which marks ‘Strongly Disagree’ for Statement 17: “The proposals conserve the landscape and scenic beauty of nationally designated landscapes”; Statement 20: “The proposals will sustain and enhance the significance of the identified heritage assets”; and Statement 37: “The proposals protect existing rights of way across or adjacent to the site, and enhance these, either through improvements or by the provision of additional links to the networks.” This development therefore cannot be deemed sustainable on culture and heritage grounds.

Agriculture and wildlife

Under paragraph 112 of the NPPF, local planning authorities “should take into account the economic and other benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land. Where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, local planning authorities should seek to use areas of poorer quality land in preference to that of higher quality.” Given that 70% of the agricultural land in this proposed development site is classified as excellent, very good or good, this land should not be deemed appropriate for development, particularly for a scheme that, as already evidenced, is not needed in this location.

Within the development site are the habitats of numerous protected species. In their comments on this application, Kent Wildlife Trust, despite being listed as a ‘partner’ of Quinn Estates, do not consider that there has been enough specific consideration of the breeding habitats for priority species on the site. Policy LB9 of the Local Plan states the following: “All development should avoid a net loss of biodiversity/nature conservation value and actively pursue opportunities to achieve a new gain, particularly where there are wildlife habitats/species identified as Species or Habitats of Principal Importance.” The Outline Ecological and Landscape Management Plan produced for this development has identified several bird species of principle importance, including the internationally vulnerable turtle dove, as well as the Spotted Flycatcher, Yellowhammer, Skylark and Linnet. Yet despite their importance, the measures outlined for mitigation, compensation and enhancement of their habitats do not consider the specific needs of each of these species, frequently referring to ‘birds’ in general, as well as the behaviours of foraging, feeding and breeding in vague terms; which – as Kent Wildlife Trust suggests – hinders attempts to pursue the level of biodiversity gain that the Local Plan demands.

Despite claims within the application that the development will result overall gains in biodiversity and existing ecological interest, under CSE’s independent ‘Sustainability Scorecard’, they have marked ‘Disagree’ for Statement 42: “The proposals create or significantly enhance locally-identified priority habitats / species and avoid damage to national / internationally designated wildlife sites.” The fact that two independent organisations consulted by the developers for this application evidently do not agree with the ecological assessment produced for this application, under Policy LB9 of the Local Plan, Highland Court should not be deemed an appropriate location for this type of development.

The outcome of this application will ultimately come down to the application of planning law, and I hope in this statement to have comprehensively outlined the multifarious reasons why this proposed development cannot be deemed appropriate or necessary under local and national planning policy. For local land as significant as AONBs, Areas of High Landscape Value and conservation areas, we cannot afford to set a precedent in planning applications for inappropriately large and disruptive developments being approved. This concerns the fundamental reasoning behind the planning process – to decide where (and what) development is necessary and appropriate, and to preserve lands of existing social, cultural, economic and historic value from artificial changes that would diminish this value. Proposed development of this scale in our slice of the Kent Downs AONB at Highland Court without doubt falls under the latter.

The Timekeeper's Return: The Reveal

It’s finally time to talk about what I’ve been spending nearly all of my days working on since early July, and it feels fantastic, because I have some very exciting news to share.

On 20^th October, the opening day of the Canterbury Festival, a mixed-reality game that I have designed and written from scratch is coming to the heart of the city centre.

The Timekeeper’s Return is an immersive story-based treasure hunt, designed for all ages, in which players scan QR codes to discover secrets about different locations in Canterbury’s Cathedral Quarter.

Here is the blurb used on the event’s promotional material, to give you an overview of what The Timekeeper’s Return is all about, and to whet your appetite:

Layers of history connected together, the Cathedral Quarter is a unique scaffold of stories; seemingly timeless. But one person, one object, one moment… can change its future forever.

When historical researcher Dr. Mia Augustina stumbles upon an astrolabe, an antique navigation device, she discovers that it holds a powerful secret - it can transport her back in time.

Lured into the labyrinth of time-travel and its perils, the astrolabe malfunctions as Mia learns the truth of our past – threatening the future and her return. She has a plan to recalibrate the device, but she’ll need your help.

Mia has recorded her stories from each journey into the past using a ‘triangulation marker’ – a sticker generated by the astrolabe with a QR code, which holds coordinates and information about its location.

Deciphering each one will enable you to navigate to the next, and once each triangulation marker has been scanned, the astrolabe can guide Mia back to the present with history restored.

Have you got what it takes to help Dr. Augustina uncover the mysteries of the astrolabe, and reveal the secrets of the Cathedral Quarter? You’ll need a keen eye for detail and a QR code scanner installed on a smartphone.

The Timekeeper’s Return begins at the compass in Longmarket Square. Get hunting on Saturday 20^th October in Canterbury’s Cathedral Quarter!

Everyone who finishes the treasure hunt will receive a small reward, and also be entered into a prize draw, with a really fantastic bunch of prizes being offered from local businesses, including:

Tickets for a group of four to see this year’s Christmas pantomime at the Marlowe Theatre
Meal for four at Chapter
Ray-Bans from Biggs Opticians
Champagne cream tea for two at Moat Tea Rooms
£100 gift voucher for The Chinaman
A pen fashioned from a 15th century joist extracted from the Cathedral, from Canterbury Cathedral Shop
£50 gift voucher for Antoine et Lili
£50 gift voucher for Canterbury Pottery

Canteen will also be offering a 10% discount on refreshments for all players on the day.

The hunt itself shouldn’t take much more than an hour to complete; and as it takes place right in the city centre, it should be easy to fit around the other events happening on the opening day of the Canterbury Festival.

Now I’ve covered the main details of the event, many of you reading this may not be familiar with what the Cathedral Quarter even is, so let me explain. In the same way that Guildhall St., Palace St., The Borough and Northgate (plus parts of Orange St. and Sun St.) have been re-branded as The King’s Mile, The Cathedral Quarter is the name now being given to the historic area containing Burgate and the streets that branch of it: half of Sun St., Mercery Lane, Butchery Lane, Iron Bar Lane and Canterbury Lane.

In my old job as an ambassador for Canterbury Business Improvement District, I attended most of the early meetings when the Cathedral Quarter was being established. As someone who spoke to all the businesses in the area on an everyday basis, hearing the issues they faced but also their energy, positivity and desire to enrich the city, I was keen to help in any way I could to breathe new life into this part of Canterbury.

In our efforts to define what we wanted the Cathedral Quarter brand to represent, we started by outlining what makes these streets so special. From a business perspective, the qualities that make this area unique are the high proportion of independent retailers, but also high-quality speciality products, such as the hand-made brogues at Loake Shoemakers, chic bohemian clothing at Antoine et Lili, or fine china gifts from The Chinaman. The service you get is personal, and those that serve you are deeply invested in the well-being of the area, either as the business owner themselves or as locals. Here is a recent promotional video which should give you a flavour of what the Cathedral Quarter is all about, from this perspective.

Meanwhile, to the eye of a pedestrian, the Cathedral Quarter is a jigsaw puzzle of different time periods that are visible in the built environment today. Of course, it is home to the medieval splendour of Canterbury Cathedral and its Christchurch Gate, alongside a number of very old buildings often formerly used as inns for pilgrims. Cobbled streets are some of the first images that come to mind. But as you walk up Burgate towards the ring road, you begin to notice a change in the architecture of the city. The streets between Butchery Lane and the ring road were devastated by bombing during WWII, and the post-war reconstruction effort embraced the modern design trends of the time, which you can see today in the concrete and straight edges of St. Thomas’ Church Hall and the often-overlooked building now occupied by Superdrug, which won a RIBA Bronze Award for its architecture in 1957.

During the early Cathedral Quarter meetings, there was a consensus that running events would be a shrewd method of generating interest about what is happening in this segment of the city. Even early on, the idea of a treasure hunt was suggested as an effective way for people find out what is in the Cathedral Quarter for themselves, by encouraging them to engage with the intriguing material landscape you can discover there. As you can gauge from the promotional video linked above, this sensory offering extends to the area’s businesses.

We knew any treasure hunt would need to be something fairly easy to implement – so not too technologically demanding – and also accessible enough for the general public. As I considered these different specifications, my focus started to centre on QR codes. Practically, most people now own a smartphone – or are close to someone who does – and QR code scanners can be freely installed on these devices (many ranges now actually come with QR scanners pre-installed). Everyone has seen these codes before and at least has an idea about what they are.

On a creative level, I’ve always been intrigued by QR codes because they’re so ‘in-your-face’, but indecipherable at the same time. They act almost as portals to another dimension, overlaying physical space with information that can only be accessed virtually.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the history of this part of Canterbury, but not just facts or snippets of knowledge. I wanted to find stories that would resonate with people emotionally, and particularly those that have left a residue in the built environment. There are few more poignant experiences than being able to see and touch something historic, knowing the depth of feeling behind it, and the significance it has had for people’s lived experiences.

Once I’d decided for certain that the event would be a story-based game, I settled on the concept of a time-travelling academic for the main character, and in particular a person who researches history. It needed to be someone who would naturally be interested in the traces of past lives and livelihoods in Canterbury, and someone with the passion to want to show other people what makes them fascinating. I imagined a smart, enthusiastic female protagonist, and after some deliberation arrived at the name Mia Augustina. It’s possible to find a few layers of meaning behind this name, but for me the overall goal was to make it something timeless, and in some ways cross-cultural – a name you could imagine someone having centuries ago, or perhaps in a far-off land.

As for the means of time travelling itself, it was quite a while later that I decided on the time machine being an astrolabe. While developing the main plot of the story, I began to ask myself some difficult questions about how the time travelling would actually happen. Where would this time machine come from? Why would an historian have one lying around, and how could they be the only person to know about it?

I figured that it would make sense, in the context of the story, if the device were some kind of artefact discovered during Mia’s research, which she has kept secret. An astrolabe seemed appropriate, again for its fantastical and timeless qualities (astrolabes were invented in ancient times, used widely in the medieval period and are still sought after today), but mainly for how they encapsulate the dimensions of space and time in a single object. Among their numerous uses, astrolabes allow you to calculate the position of stars on any given date, as well as the time of day based on their position. These attributes also made them important tools for navigation, as they allowed the user to work out their current latitude. I’ll let those who are interested dig deeper into the fictional background for themselves, but I will also say that Canterbury as a city has a long-running and intimate connection with astrolabes which is worth looking at.

You'll note that an astrolabe symbol features at the top of this blog post, as well as in all our advertising for the event. The graphics for all our promotional materials were designed by my brother Sam Lowe, principal designer at SDL Residential Design, who did a superb job at creating striking iconography that works well as a centrepiece for the event. One excellent feature of the design I should point out is the diamond shape positioned across the circle, which can perfectly hold a single QR code (QR codes can be scanned in any orientation). You'll be seeing more of this graphic soon!

As for the how story itself unfolds, in the spirit of not giving too much away, all I’ll say is that the plot advanced through each QR code ‘snippet’ follows Mia’s travels through time in the Cathedral Quarter: the people and places she encounters, their stories, and what she discovers about the astrolabe on her journey.

Looking back on the creative process behind this event, I feel immensely grateful and humbled by the faith that the Cathedral Quarter businesses and associates have put in me to lead the project. I would warmly encourage those who take part to use this event as an opportunity to meet the people ‘behind the cobbles’. Get to know them and hear their stories; find out why they do what they do, and why they’re passionate about their professions. It’s exactly the kind of people I have met through the Cathedral Quarter that make the city such a lovely place in which to live and work.

On a personal level, this has been a big step for me in terms of my artistic ambitions, having been given the opportunity to bring my ideas and imagination to such a wide public audience. I would be truly thankful for each and every one of you who plays this game. And in particular, I would love to hear your thoughts on the experience and what it means for you personally.

Before I sign off, I just want to mention that we’re going to try and run a couple of testing sessions with members of the public before October 20^th, so if you’re interested in getting involved then please let me know.

If you have any questions about the event itself, press/publicity, the Cathedral Quarter, or even want someone to discuss Canterbury’s heritage and geography with, then please also get in touch. Though bear in mind that this next month is going to be incredibly busy for me!

Pop it in your calendar, mark yourself as ‘going’ on the Facebook event page, and share the news: The Timekeeper’s Return is coming to Canterbury’s Cathedral Quarter, 20^th October 10am – 4pm. Your journey unfolds at Longmarket Square – what secrets await?

RGS-IBG Conference 2018: Reprogramming Landscapes of Play: Navigation and Narrative in Geocaching

--------------------------

Below is the written component of the paper I presented in the Landscapes of Digital Games session – which I also co-convened – at the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference on 31^st August 2018. The superscript numbers in the text indicate the number of the corresponding slide you should view in the embedded Powerpoint above (you can access the slides separately as a PDF here).

I’d like to thank Emma Fraser and Nick Rush-Cooper for their efforts in organising this session with me, particularly as someone who had not convened a conference session before. I’m also grateful to the Digital Geographies Working Group for sponsoring Landscapes of Digital Games, alongside an impressive number of other sessions on digital themes throughout the conference. Lastly, I want to thank my fellow presenters in this session, Umran Ali, Thijs van den Berg and Peter Nelson. As convenors we were thrilled not only with the quality of the papers, but how well they spoke to each other throughout the session. I hope the discussions we had can continue as our own individual work develops.        

--------------------------

How¹ are digital technologies affecting the ways we interact with landscapes playfully? By² extending playful practices into the realms of computer software and the internet, we’ve already seen in this session the range of virtual environments designed to enable fun and meaningful experiences in video games. Yet playful³ expression isn’t somehow abandoning the corporeal in its use of interfaces such as screens, keyboards and controllers. Through their location-aware, communicative and mobile capabilities, digital media are hybridising everyday physical environments by cultivating interactive practices of information sharing, community building and, ultimately, play.

Pervasive games are those whose gameplay extends⁴ into the corporeal world; expanding Huizinga’s notion of the magic circle of play spatially – beyond a delimited arena; temporally – beyond specific time limits; and socially – beyond a designated group of players. While video games are designed with a range of possible interactions and interpretations in mind, pervasive games use digital technology to channel the physical properties, affective intensities and contingencies of already-existing landscapes to generate the conditions for players to have “positively affective” experiences, to quote James Ash.

Today⁵, I’m going to explore how landscapes are articulated in the playing of pervasive games. I’ll be contending that landscapes are not the product of a directed relationship between subject and object, but an emergent experience constituted in part by the affordances of digital technologies, but in interaction with an array of material, social and embodied agents that assemble contingently, in situ.

To make⁶ this argument, I’ll be discussing Geocaching, a popular pervasive treasure hunting game, played worldwide using GPS. The game relies on players hiding containers called ‘caches’ in physical environments, and putting their coordinates online. Using a GPS-enabled mobile device, other players can then travel to the given coordinates to search for the cache. Each⁷ cache contains a logbook, which is signed by every player who has managed to find the cache; and finds are also logged on the individual page for each cache on the Geocaching.com website, where players can describe their experiences in greater detail.

As an example⁸ of how increasingly prevalent digital technology is incorporated into everyday life through play, I became interested in how Geocaching articulated the idea of subject-object relationships central to the concept of landscape. In what ways are landscapes imagined, represented, performed and contested through the game’s practices?

My research into Geocaching started as a small coursework project during my MA, in which⁹ I carried out ethnographic fieldwork over a week in the city of Canterbury in Kent. This involved not only downloading and playing the game myself, but also looking at online descriptions of caches on the Geocaching website, and reading logs people had written for geocaches they’d found. I’ve since continued playing, finding 362 geocaches in total to date; and I’ll be using Geocaching as platform for my practice-based PhD project on place-based storytelling. The material I’ll be presenting today is informed both by the initial MA research, and my subsequent experiences as a player since.

To elaborate¹⁰ on the conception of landscape as an emergent, intersubjective experience, I’m going to delve into the two main components of the Geocaching gameplay experience. Firstly, I’ll discuss navigating to geocaches as a process of attunement with the landscape; and then frame engaging with the narratives of the cache location as a situated performance of a ‘geocacher’ role.

The¹¹ game of Geocaching is structured around a particular form of imagination: the pursuit of what is hidden or ‘secret’ within everyday spaces, and also those ‘secret’ spaces lying beyond the bounds of the everyday. Yet, in the search for landscapes that are ‘off the map’, the gameplay raises questions about what’s ‘on the map’ – and ultimately, the boundaries between the visible and invisible, known and unknown, appreciated and unappreciated in imaginations and representations of everyday landscapes.

From¹² my initial research, carried out in my home city of Canterbury, I became distinctly aware of these boundaries when navigating to caches located along both my usual routes through the city, and parts of my home city I wouldn’t otherwise go. The very first cache I found was located in a car park less than 200 metres from my regular route into town, yet I’d never travelled there before nor knew of its existence. In the hunt for a secret, my cognitive map of the city had been expanded to include a location and information that I wasn’t aware of previously.

However¹³, even in places I knew, searching for caches reconfigured the boundaries between visible and invisible, particularly for caches that were hidden in plain sight. The two pictured here were both clearly exposed, yet being hidden above and below eye-level respectively meant they weren’t rendered visible until I navigated using the GPS compass on the Geocaching app. Equally, until that day, my relationship with these spaces had only been to pass through to somewhere else; yet in this case the game demanded purposeful interaction with their material features, to search for a hidden container. Taking part in this gameplay meant that I payed closer attention to mundane details in the environment, which I would otherwise likely ignore.

Together¹⁴, the technology, game design and bodily senses of the player converge when Geocaching to enact what Maja Klausen calls the ‘player gaze’ – the cognitive work of interpreting, evaluating and making connections between things one perceives during the play experience. The way this gaze is performed by players develops over time. Through repeated practice, I typically find caches much quicker now compared to when I started, and have observed¹⁵ other experienced geocachers referring to this phenomenon as their ‘geosenses’ or ‘cacher’s eye’. This can involve recognising signs of disturbed ground, understanding the sensitivity of the Geocaching app’s GPS compass, and keeping in mind common hiding techniques (such as magnetic caches, or those wedged into crevices of trees). Geocaching here involves a process of teleplastic attunement whereby technology and gameplay combine to reorient bodily senses, fostering a player gaze that re-programmes imaginations of landscapes by rendering the ‘strange familiar’ and the ‘familiar strange’.

In particular¹⁶, what makes the design of Geocaching’s gameplay distinct from other pervasive games is how the limitations of GPS are themselves adopted to enable players to attune with their surroundings. While reaching the given coordinates will bring the player within close proximity of the geocache, GPS technology itself is only accurate within a 10-metre radius, and is degraded further by physical factors such as tree cover. Yet rather than fostering a detachment from the corporeal game environment, these affordances force you to look up from your device and interact with the physical environment to find the hidden container, intensifying the player’s relationship with the corporeal landscape. In turn¹⁷, other players have the agency to hide geocaches and engage with the materiality of their locations in creative or elaborate ways, such as those shown here. A geocache’s coordinates are there for anyone to see; it’s by engaging with the unique¹⁸ materialities of cache locations that geocachers become gatekeepers to “intimate spatial knowledge” (to quote Bradley Garrett) and the “empowering and exciting” attunement with the landscape that entails.

Nonetheless¹⁹, it’s important to note the unevenness in the ability of players to adopt such affectively powerful practices of navigation. As well as the immediate requirement for participants to own and be able to use a GPS-enabled mobile device, many geocaches are only locatable for premium members at geocaching.com, which costs £25 a year for a renewable membership. On the official Geocaching app, free membership only provides access to traditional caches, limiting the kinds of gameplay in which these members can participate. As such, the division between visible and invisible, and accessibility of the game landscape’s affective potential, is entwined with a ‘digital divide’ at the level of the individual geocacher.

By apprehending²⁰ navigation to geocaches as an intersubjective process of attunement, we can see that the affordances of each gameplay component – the technology, materials, and the player’s own bodily and social capacities – all interact over time to shape the affective qualities of the player’s journey through the game environment. But how are these affective intensities articulated by players when they reach cache sites, where the performative acts of retrieving and signing logbooks engage with a palimpsest of past and present narratives of play?                                

In the search²¹ for hidden treasure in physical landscapes, players must negotiate the evental happenings of the locations in which they are Geocaching. The player’s experience of the landscape is conditioned by their agency as a participant in both the “situated multiplicity” of the physical environment during play, and its broader narrative tissue, represented by the geocache log and the stories of those who have signed it.

As Geocaching²² takes place in public spaces that both players and non-players can access, passersby inevitably become “requisites and stakeholders in the game”. Referred to by players as ‘muggles’, passersby present challenges to successful participation in the game: specifically, the risk of them unknowingly discovering and misplacing or stealing the cache. To avoid such occurrences, geocachers must perform acts of “stealth” to avoid the attention that abnormal behaviour might attract from muggles.

In one²³ busy urban location in Canterbury, the importance of “stealth” became apparent to me when looking for a cache hidden on the underside of a bench beside a pub, where numerous onlookers sat outside. Rather than abandoning the cache, I devised a tactic of using my body as a shield to block the view of the muggles, followed by the socially acceptable act of bending down to pick up a pen I’d ‘accidentally’ dropped beforehand. These actions very much felt part of a “secret society narrative”, whereby my willing suspension of disbelief in the reality of the game – performed through symbolic acts of stealth – enhanced the play experience. Rather than being a hindrance, the affective intensity of the location, personified in the presence of people and their social norms, could be channelled in playful ways to perform new stories of engagement with the urban landscape.

Not all Geocaching²⁴ attempts transpire this smoothly. Indeed, aside from the risk of ruining other players’ enjoyment through negligence, behaviours that conflict with social conventions have triggered, for example, legal action and security alerts. The physicality of the human body itself is a site of contestation in this regard, as presence in public space, as well as participation in the community, may interact with wider norms linked to race, gender and (dis)ability. As a white, able-bodied male, I didn’t notice any barriers to access based on these embodied factors alone.

Yet my participation²⁵ has been restricted in other ways; most notably in one circumstance where I was unable to reach a cache hidden high up a tree. After climbing about three quarters of the way up the trunk without seeing the cache, I knew it must have been placed higher. Yet even climbing that far in windy conditions was a nerve-wracking experience. Had I attempted to climb higher, I recognised that I’d couldn’t have made three points of contact on the trunk, which contravened the social standards of climbing safety I’d once learnt. By abandoning my retrieval of the cache, my experience was characterised by situated articulations of material conditions, social norms and bodily capacities which were not simply playful or serendipitous, but actively restrictive.

The first²⁶ thing I did following my failure was to write a ‘Did Not Find’ or ‘DNF’ log on the cache’s virtual page, complete with a description of my attempts. By signing the log physically if the cache is found, and online regardless, geocachers mark their visits to cache sites and build a repertoire of ‘found caches’ on their profile at Geocaching.com. Yet logging has two additional purposes. The first is to share anecdotes and information with fellow geocachers, such as how difficult the cache was to find, if there were muggles around, or if any interesting events occurred. This form of logging can resemble a psychogeographical “story-stacking” process, where each new inscription of presence nurtures an “ecology of narratives” that is mapped and broadcasted through the game’s digital technologies. More than this, though, logs such as mine – especially DNFs – can signal any problems to cache owners, such as caches that require maintenance or are potentially missing. The act of logging is a situated performance of the geocacher role – to ensure the narrative context of the game landscape remains intact for other geocachers to participate in themselves.

Still²⁷, if you look at any geocache logs online, most comments are no more than a couple of sentences, and many are simply a few words or abbreviations such as ‘TFTC’ (thanks for the cache). At the same time, the interface of the Geocaching website and app don’t do much to encourage players to engage with what people have written on the cache page. Logs are simply listed in chronological order, requiring a lot of scrolling to read those further back. Together, the technology exhibited in the design of the website and app, and the social customs of cache design and logging exhibited by the community, delimit the capacities of geocachers to interact meaningfully with the stories that make landscapes significant to people.

In performing²⁸ the acts of stealth, logging and maintenance that embody the more interpretive aspects of the landscape ‘experience’ in Geocaching, the potential for geocachers to engage mindfully with the narratives of geocache sites manifests in situ. The information-sharing and communicative capacities of the game’s technology, materials and community are articulated by individual geocachers with distinct bodily and social capacities.

When²⁹ we consider the concept of landscape itself, which apprehends space through ideas of subject-object relations, we can discern a conception here that’s far more distributed than a directed relationship between singular human subject and physical landscape. If we refer back to the notion of the ‘player gaze’ and how it manifests as a process of attunement, we can see that it involves a continuous constructing and undoing of connections between the different technological, material, social and embodied elements encountered during play. The player’s not a gazing subject, but rather is performing a “perceptual actualisation of landscape and self, of materialities and sensibilities”, whereby their navigation and emplotment of the environment unfolds contingently and over time.

It’s here that I’m recognising the value of post-phenomenology as a framework for apprehending digital game landscapes, as a theoretical approach that emphasises the mutual influence of material objects and human subjects in the construction of experience. Both incidentally and over time, we can distinguish the agency of non-human elements in Geocaching in reorienting the player’s sensory and emotional perception, and in turn how players act situationally to perform narratives of engagement with the enveloping landscape. Here, digital technologies are not a medium or lens, but have agency on us, other material objects, and each other. Their affordances are co-conspirators in the stories that unfold as Geocaching practices are performed.

Geocaching³⁰ is a particularly apt example for examining interactions between human and non-human entities in landscapes of play as, despite technically being a ‘digital game’, much of the gameplay seems to occur without the use of digital devices. In his ethnographic work on the everyday realities of digital technology, Mike Duggan describes how the ‘digital’ element is often not apparent during community-oriented practices of Geocaching such as logging; yet without the technological architecture of the gameplay, the broader emotional experience of the game would never come to fruition.

Looking ahead to possible future research, these observations signal the importance of further insight into the ways digital technology is experienced in everyday life, such that we can develop more nuanced understandings of how landscapes unfold, which avoid the pitfalls of technological determinism, social constructionism, or focusing on a singular thinking human subject. For geographical research into digital games specifically, there’s ample opportunity for deeper study into the processes through which game landscapes come into being, from the early stages of design, programming and testing, through to the end-user experience and wider social and cultural impact.

I’m hoping³¹ that my upcoming practice-based PhD project can lead to some salient insights into all these stages of development, as I’ll be adapting the gameplay of Geocaching to attempt to create new methods of engaging with the stories that make landscapes meaningful to people.