Pseudo-Walk: Imagined Walking and Its Influence on Urban Space

This research examines how the walks that have never physically taken place can nonetheless produce tangible spatial and political effects in urban environments. It presents the concept of the “pseudo-walk,” a narrated or imagined trajectory through space that functions without physical movement while producing social and spatial significance, informed by advancements in mobility studies, anticipatory geographies, and literary geography. While geographers have extensively theorised physical walking as a mode of urban knowledge production, the category of movement that is articulated but not enacted remains undertheorised. Building on recent work in psychogeography, virtual geographies, and imaginary spaces, it explores how walking, beyond physical mobility, functions as spatial storytelling in which memory and anticipation influence urban experience. Through discourse analysis, literary analysis, and thought experiments, it examines whether imagined or remembered walks can exert spatial agency comparable to actual movement. Two case studies illustrate this concept. First, through literary geography, Charles Dickens’ insomnia-driven nighttime walks turned into stories that reshaped perceptions of London, producing new ways to think about places through memory and imagination. Second, the Hong Kong protests are a different case because they engage “anticipatory geographies” and “political mobilities.” Protesters imagine a future “walk of return” through sites of resistance in a city that has just become independent. Though speculative, this imagined march influences political discourse and maps an alternative urban future grounded in deferred freedom. The paper contributes to geographic theory by demonstrating how non-enacted mobilities function as mechanisms of spatial production, advancing debates in cultural geography about the relationship between representation, imagination, and material urban transformation.