Sensing Cities: Urban Aesthetics in a Global Age

This book identifies an important aspect in the analysis of urban change in the late twentieth century by highlighting the significance of the senses in the constitution of urban life. Degen argues that as cities around the globe are radically re-designing their urban landscapes - thus generating a different urban aesthetic and new experiential milieus -new forms of social exclusion and inclusion are emerging that demand new analytical frameworks to address the impact that material transformations have on the public life of cities. Through a global ethnographic approach, urban global dynamics initiated in the US - such as urban regeneration and the commodification of the urban landscape - are reworked in different social and cultural contexts, using emblematic examples from Britain and Europe providing a methodology for studying the experience and culture of modern cities. Sensing Cities makes an important contribution to the theorisation of urban life; more precisely public space as a lived and sensory experience, which has major implications for our understanding of the politics of publicity in changing urban contexts.