A Deep Road Map for Bristol

This paper draws on creative and scholarly traditions within human and psycho geography and deep mapping to characterise and locate aspects of the city of Bristol. Themes of 20th century road building and the ‘lost futures’ of 1960s modernist optimism are used to link the two separate sites of Cumberland Basin and Totterdown. The work of English landscape architect and author Sylvia Crowe for Cumberland Basin is briefly detailed and the narrative of an ill-fated 1960s / 70s road scheme in Totterdown is recounted. Relationships between the motor car, roads and the city are considered as a possible method for building an interdisciplinary understanding of the city through an essaying of place as part of an extended slow residency. The approach includes comparative reflection between the two sites through local histories and current uses alongside considering of the possibility of urban exploration as both a real world and online activity