City As Relationship

Abstract

Volume XX (Spring 2011) of Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad takes a thematic focus on “Study Abroad and the City.” As part of the Global Cities Seminar hosted by CAPA International Education in Vancouver in May 2011, participants were asked to consider the use of the city as text, the city as document, and the city as cultural informant. The articles featured in the journal and at the workshop presented an array of case studies and compelling arguments for ensuring active engagement with the physical environment that various urban spaces provide as educative tools for students abroad.

During the discussion that followed the presentations, an aspect not fully explored either in the journal or on the panel occurred to me. What about the city as a relationship? As Rodríguez and Rink suggest in their article Performing the City: Engaging the High Tech Flaneur (2011), the ability of the city to elicit a visceral and emotional response is a powerful but often untapped element of the experience abroad. At the most obvious and basic level, travelers inevitably articulate their experience of destinations in the language of emotion: “I did not really like Venice, but I loved Rome.” I would like to give a bit of consideration to the emotional relationship travelers, and more specifically students on programs abroad, have with cities. I would also like to suggest some of the opportunities “the city as relationship” might offer if explored or presented as such.