Cudney, Z. 'Street in globe, globe in street: Google Earth, planet walks, and peripatetic mediations of scale.' (Paper presented, Geographies of Media and Communication, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 2026).

This paper presents research-in-progress on walking, both physically and virtually, as a way of mediating the ‘planetary.’ It looks at two different case studies—Google Street View and ‘planet walks’—to examine the way the ‘planetary’ is made legible and meaningful at the scale of bodies, individuals, and communities and through peripatetic methods. The first example considers Google Earth, which today combines both satellite imagery and Street View imagery. Yet despite the mostly-seamless integration of these two perspectives, they have indexed very different epistemologies throughout the histories of geography, cartography, visual studies, and science studies (e.g. ‘God trick’ vs. situated knowledges). What, then, are the implications of their integration in Google Earth? How might Street View, seen in tandem with aerial imagery, facilitate not just a grounded perspective but a planetary one as well? The second example considers ‘planet walks’—paths which follow a scale-model of the solar system. From Anchorage to Ithaca to Liechtenstein, planet walks mediate a sense of scale through the use of public paths and sculptures. Similar to the way that ‘whole Earth’ images correlated with the environmentalist movement in the 1970s, planet walks today combine science communication with outdoor recreation. But in light of a ‘planetary turn’ in the arts, humanities, and critical theory, what other messages might ‘planet walks’ be mediating? Through these two case studies, I focus on the way that streets, paths, and the experience of walking come to mediate a sense of scale through planetary imagery.