New York Songlines

Jim Naureckas offers a set of New York Songlines, pathways through the city annotated with stories for each block. The name, made famous in a book by Bruce Chatwin, comes from the elaborate mythological song cycles Australian aborigines would learn to enable them to navigate across a harsh landscape.

He feels that in their hurry to get to their destinations without noticing what lies between, New Yorkers have lost their sense of place, and writes:

[This] is a shame, because New York has its own giants, heroes and monsters who left their marks and their names on the land around us. If we learn their stories which are written on our streets and avenues, we’ll have a much better chance of knowing where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

Does thinking of a landscape as narrative, rather than as cartography, increase one’s sense of place?