The Meanderthal, a new species of urban flâneur. No longer merely out for a stroll through the streets, the Meanderthal has become a threat to the efficiencies of urban life and to the flows of pedestrians, vehicles, and capital taken for granted in the urban everyday. Whether he/she is chatting on a cell phone, standing on the wrong side of an escalator, cycling on the sidewalk, or dangerously jaywalking, the Meanderthal obliviously causes that most frustrating of urban traffic jams: the pedlock.

Like a stick in the spokes, the Meanderthal brings urban mobility to a halt and exposes (infra)structural impediments. When confronted by this new urban creature others are compelled to pursue new lines of flight through and around the urban jungle. The new urbanite who would avoid the pedlock produced by the Meanderthal becomes another sort of 21st century flâneur: Flâneur 2.0. The goal of this new flâneur is not to aestheticize urban life as his nineteenth-century precursor was wont to do, but to instrumentalize it in the name of efficiency and speed. [...]