Twice a year, the artist and local organizer JJ Tiziou invites people to join him on a roughly 100-mile walk that traces Philadelphia’s perimeter.
That perimeter used to just be the little rectangle that’s Center City today — until in 1854, all the towns in Philadelphia County got pulled into one big sprawling city. It packed all sorts of communities and landscapes inside an oddly shaped border made up of rivers, creeks, and arbitrary lines. You can live in this place for a lifetime without really knowing all there is to Philadelphia. And JJ’s hope is for this walk to change that, at least a little.
In the fall of 2024, I joined him — to see what walking the edge could reveal about our city, about each other, and maybe even about ourselves. And I crafted this audio piece about the journey.