Walking as method: travelling studio and the critical Asian outside in urban analysis

This article develops the travelling studio as a methodological approach for urban analysis, foregrounding embodied encounter, collective reflection, and relational comparison. Responding to ongoing debates in urban geography concerning comparative method and situated knowledge, the paper argues that existing approaches often privilege either abstract comparison or single-site depth, leaving limited space for forms of inquiry grounded in movement, perception, and inter-Asian relationality. Drawing on a five-day travelling studio conducted in Singapore with graduate students from Taiwan, the study demonstrates how walking-based fieldwork and reflexive logs can generate situated insights into the affective and atmospheric dimensions of urban governance. Rather than treating Singapore as a bounded case, the paper mobilises it as a field of encounter through which method becomes visible. The analysis shows how students’ oscillation between familiarity and estrangement enables the identification of spatial regimes that might otherwise remain unremarked. Building on this, the article introduces the notion of a critical Asian outside as an epistemological position grounded in regional adjacency rather than external comparison. The paper concludes that the travelling studio offers adaptable methodological principles for comparative urban inquiry, particularly where regional histories, proximities, and differences can be mobilised through embodied encounter.