In walkshops, “state change” isn’t something you design on top of the session. It’s already happening, all the time. Every step is a shift. Every corner, sound, smell, encounter, pause, or crossing is a change of state.
When we work with futures in urban environments, the city becomes an active co-facilitator. Attention changes constantly: people notice the traffic and the moments of silence. They notice when they are moving, or not, and in the walks and walkshops that I run, we move between private reflection to shared noticing. These shifts do what no slide deck ever can. They keep participants awake to what is emerging.
We know that monotony dulls perception whereas change sharpens it. On a walk, the “state changes” aren’t breakout rooms or chat prompts. They’re embodied, spatial, and relational. In a walkshop, state change might look like:
- walking silently for two minutes, then stopping to speak,
- shifting from fast movement to standing still,
- turning attention from the future “out there” to what is happening underfoot,
- asking one question while moving, and a different one when the group stops,
- letting the city interrupt the agenda, and following that interruption.
Urban futures work benefits from this constant modulation. Cities are complex, layered, unequal, alive. Walking through them brings to light contradictions that stay happily in the dark when we’re in meeting rooms. The body notices what the intellect might bypass.
State change on foot helps participants stay present without force, tolerate ambiguity without rushing to solutions, and sense futures as lived possibilities, not abstract scenarios.
In this way, walkshops don’t just use state change. They train it. People who participate leave not only with insights about possible futures, but with a felt understanding of how attention, movement, and environment shape what futures become visible in the first place.