Walking the Streets

Walking through the city during the morning rush hour can be a bit of a battle. I got out of Bank station and was about to walk up Lombard Street towards work when a dense stream of people appeared from the right. All of a sudden there was a solid wall of commuters crossing the road in front of me and disappearing again into an alley between a couple of buildings. Clearly I'd had the misfortune to time my arrival at Bank with that of a trainload or two of passengers recently disgorged from Cannon Street station. Bugger, I thought,and waded in. I had to fight every inch of the way through this ever denser flood of humanity lest I end up carried away by the flow and deposited somewhere on the other side of the Stock Exchange, not at all where I wanted to be.

I finally reached the far side, bruised and breathless and continued on my way to work. It got me thinking, however, of what it would be like to have an eagle eye view of the city and be able to see whether the view of how people walking along the streets interact with each other changes if you look at it at the macro level.

I know, I know, that sounds really sad but I'm afraid that sort of thing just fascinates me.