Remembered routes in destroyed cities: Spatial memory and pedestrian navigation after the 2023 Antakya earthquakes

Urban disasters disrupt not only transport infrastructure but also the cognitive relationships that enable navigation of familiar environments, yet post-disaster recovery policies rarely address how spatial memory supports pedestrian mobility after catastrophic destruction. This paper investigates how remembered routes and spatial familiarity influence pedestrian navigation following the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in Antakya’s Historic City Centre, Türkiye, drawing on cognitive mapping, photo-elicitation, questionnaires, and interviews with twenty long-term residents, analysed thematically using MAXQDA 24. The findings show that pedestrian movement after the disaster was not guided solely by the altered physical environment: participants relied on remembered street networks, habitual walking routines, and long-established cognitive representations of the city. Even where buildings and streets had disappeared, pre-disaster spatial knowledge continued to shape navigation, with pedestrians adapting existing cognitive maps to negotiate an unfamiliar landscape rather than constructing new movement patterns. This suggests that embodied spatial knowledge functions as a component of disaster resilience supporting mobility continuity during extreme urban disruption. The paper argues that disaster-resilient transport planning should extend beyond reconstructing infrastructure to incorporate this cognitive dimension of accessibility, supporting more inclusive, human-centred recovery in historic cities where place attachment and walking are central to urban life.