Groove
Journal Entry: Week 7
Continuing from last week’s reflections, I find myself drawn deeper into the relational nature of space production—not as a static medium, nor as a mere container of events, but as something dynamic, rhythmic, and alive. This week, as I think about groove in relation to Lefebvre’s theory of space, I begin to see groove as the connective tissue between presence and movement, between individual agency and collective flow. If space is not a thing but a process, then groove is its tone, its way of holding and releasing, its way of catching and letting go.
Lefebvre reminds us that space is produced through lived practices, through social relations that are in constant negotiation. But what of groove? If rhythm marks the beats of space—structured, expected—then groove is what allows those beats to breathe. Groove is relational; it is the slight delay before the downbeat, the tension between sync and release, the elasticity of time and movement that allows for adaptation, play, and co-creation. It is a practice of spacing—creating room, making space within space, filling the gaps but never in a way that hardens them into structure.
Groove, then, is the soft infrastructure of spatial production. If we are to understand space not as a rigid framework but as an ongoing process of negotiation, groove is what makes this negotiation feel embodied, felt, lived. The groove of a street corner, of a market square, of a protest—each has a different tempo, a different weight, a different capacity for improvisation. Some spaces groove easily, allowing bodies to move freely, adjusting to one another with an almost intuitive responsiveness. Others resist groove, locking movement into linear paths, stifling the potential for elasticity, for play.
I return again to the concept of groundedness, but this time, I wonder: does groove need grounding, or is it itself a form of grounding? To be in the groove is to be attuned—to the space, to others, to the pulse of what is happening around you. It is not about losing oneself in movement but about being deeply present in the act of moving, of adjusting, of listening. Groove catches you—not to hold you still, but to keep you moving in rhythm with something larger than yourself.
If space is produced, can groove be produced too? Or is groove something that emerges, only possible in spaces that tolerate mistakes, that allow for rhythmic flexibility, that resist the tyranny of efficiency? A seamless, optimized process might feel smooth, but smoothness is not groove. Groove has texture; it holds weight. It creates pockets—pauses, hesitations, anticipations—that allow for depth, for negotiation, for feeling.
This makes me wonder: what happens when a city loses its groove? What happens when the improvisational potential of space is removed, when everything is planned to the millisecond, optimized for flow but emptied of feel? Groove, after all, is not simply about movement—it is about the potential for deviation, for play, for a collective way of holding space that acknowledges and adjusts in real-time.
Maybe groove is not something we create, but something we allow to happen. And maybe the real question is: how do we design for groove? How do we build, plan, or imagine spaces that hold room for the unexpected, that don’t just move people through them, but move with them?
