I’ve lived in Halifax for most of the past decade, but there are still many streets I haven’t explored. I’ve wanted to become more familiar with the places in Halifax I haven’t been and I’ve been inspired to create a project to walk down every street on the Halifax Peninsula.
In August, I learned about Tom Loois‘ Blank Ways project through Technocult‘s “A Map of Places You Haven’t Been” and Henry Grabar’s “Choosing the Paths Less Traveled? There’s an App for That“. Tom created a personal iOS app that kept track of places visited in a city as a way to direct himself to travel down streets he hadn’t yet been down.
Design your personal definition of silence, was the assignment. Tom Loois finds his silence in places where he has never been. And there are plenty of those, even in a city you have lived in for years already. Intrigued by the blank spots in his mental map, he designed a special route planner. Blank Ways keeps track of where you have been or not been and this new application will lead you to your destination via the places you have never visited before.
Months after the articles on Blank Ways appeared, it hasn’t been released yet. It may someday be ported to Android and be a great app, but I have a city I want to explore now. I’ll be using Google Latitude to track where I go and I will piece together a custom map on Google Maps to keep track of the routes I have walked. By the end of Winter I hope to have walked down every street on the peninsula.
