Michel de Certeau is a French Philosopher whose work has been very influential in theories about space and place. I studied two chapters of his book, The Practice of Everyday Life (Walking the City, and Spatial Stories) at University and I keep returning to his ideas today.

De Certeau makes a strong argument for a democratic view of space, and makes a link between city and text which I am particularly interested in. He writes: “… space is a practiced place. Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is the space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text.”

I love this distinction between designed place and practiced space. It suits my politics to think about places as being made into spaces by the people who operate within them. And I like the connection with reader reception theories (something else I studied at University and a theory made very ‘real’ in Reader Development work) – this idea that the reader plays a creative role in the creation of a text.