| Summary: | This article deals with the use of a certain kind of walking interview, the urban walks, which I explored in the context of my master’s dissertation about Johannesburg’s nights as objects of desire and objects of fear. The urban walks allowed me to observe, in situ, the way people interact with urban nocturnal spaces. To walk at night in Johannesburg is, however, quite challenging, in a city characterized by a culture of fear. Astonishment was a key emotion in that regard: it made people willing to participate, but it also allowed reflexive thinking on that methodology. Mirroring the interviews, the use of the urban walks aimed at enriching data, involving certainly verbalization, but also and more importantly, non-representational ways of communicating, allowing for bodies, emotions, senses to be analyzed alongside with words and representations. Navigating between discomfort, fear, disappointment and pleasure, the urban walks question Johannesburg’s nocturnal spaces and also allows for some kind of appropriation.
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