The urban stroller is subversive. The walker of wide-open spaces, the trekker with his rucksack opposes civilization with the burst of a clean break, the cutting edge of a rejection. The stroller’s walking activity is more ambiguous, his resistance to modernity ambivalent. Subversion is not a matter of opposing by evading, deflecting, altering with exaggeration, accepting blandly and moving rapidly on. The flâneur subverts solitude, speed, dubious business politics and consumerism.

From A philosophy of walking by Frédéric Gros. 📚