Linking wayfinding and wayfaring

Abstract

This chapter concerns the relation between daily life traveling and public space design. While travelers are sometimes set on moving as fast as possible between points A and B in smooth ways, at other times they may engage in social encounters and sensorial experiences along the way. The concepts of wayfinding and wayfaring, respectively, embrace diverse considerations for public space design to stage such mobile situations. Wayfinding emphasizes the geosemiotic cues afforded by the city’s circulation system to let travelers know what they need to do. Wayfaring suggests that traveling involves more than moving between A and B and that public space can be designed to facilitate the richness of lives lived on the move. The concept of wayfaring may be used to revive interest in how we live mobile lives and how we find our way during daily life transport, with embodiment, diverse experiences, and social encounters. Drawing on the relatively new position of the mobilities turn and the situational mobilities framework, the chapter addresses how wayfinding and wayfaring are linked. The design considerations that begin to materialize in this conceptual linkage can be integrated within the emerging field of mobilities design. The implications of this integrated perspective for research, design, and policy making are diverse, yet they have the common characteristic of pointing to interdisciplinary endeavors to design future wayfinding in public space.