In the interactive road trip The last Tourist, Dutch artist Jan Rothuizen, who is most famous for drawing maps of all sorts and sizes, provides a personal reading of the cities that write themselves.
To walk in a city without a set destination is relatively new. It was only in the 1920s that the flaneur emerged, a modern day man who drifted trough the cities that were emerging. Now almost a hundred years later more than half of the world’s population lives in cities.
In 2006, Dutch artist Jan Rothuizen traversed the streets of Cairo for months. Cairo, the urban conglomeration of 17 Million people, which after 5000 years of continuous habitation remains the greatest metropolis of Africa and the Middle East.
In 2004, Jan Rothuizen travelled the Chinese cities of the Pearl River Delta. An urban conglomeration only slightly larger than the Dutch randstad which – if its growth rate continues – becomes a mega polis of 36 million in only 15 years.