Editorial Introduction to the Special Volume on Urban Aesthetics Sanna Lehtinen 1. Aesthetic interest in cities This Special Volume is dedicated to an increasingly central direction in contemporary philosophical aesthetics that has also been gaining interest in the dynamically developing multidisciplinary field of the philosophy of the city. In addition to these theoretical approaches, […]
Category: Special Volume 8 (2020)
Urban Aesthetics
What is an Urban Atmosphere?
What is an Urban Atmosphere? Adam Andrzejewski, Mateusz Salwa Abstract Atmosphere is one of the key ideas in contemporary aesthetics. The concept proves to be exceptionally useful whenever particular spaces, including interiors or urban spaces, are discussed regarding their unique features. The goal of the paper is to reconsider how an urban atmosphere may […]
Urban Kinaesthetics
Urban Kinaesthetics Tea Lobo Abstract The question how a city can be an aesthetic object or a beautiful object can be posed in a more fundamental manner: how a city can be perceived in the first place. By city, I mean both a built environment and its less tangible social and political reality, such […]
Visions of Political Form: Kantian Free Play and Urban Space
Visions of Political Form: Kantian Free Play and Urban Space Ryan Wittingslow Abstract A number of commentators have examined Kantian beauty in regards to its political promise. According to these readings, the free play inherent to beauty is a precondition for realizing political forms that are both pluralistic and non-coercive. But what does this […]
Atmospheric Affordances and the Sense of Urban Places
Atmospheric Affordances and the Sense of Urban Places Vesa Vihanninjoki Abstract The places of our everyday lives constitute a fundamental condition for the sensibility and the meaningfulness of our urban experience. Such places afford us various things, and it is precisely the afforded uses and actions that remarkably affect or even define our experience […]
The Socially Transformative Aesthetics of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street to The Arcades Project
The Socially Transformative Aesthetics of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street to The Arcades Project Jules Simon Abstract This paper discusses the dialectical relationship of what I call an ethical aesthetics of the city, exemplified in the relationship of the Haussmannization techniques of architectural administration and spatial domination in their forms of the functionalist […]
Street Art, Decorum, and the Politics of Urban Aesthetics
Street Art, Decorum, and the Politics of Urban Aesthetics Andrea Baldini Abstract In the last forty years or so, authorities across the globe have appealed to the notion of decorum to justify authoritarian policies of urban control. Such a notion is distinctly aesthetic insofar as it deals with good taste in matters of appearances […]
Loneliness, Art and the City
Loneliness, Art and the City David Jenkins Abstract Recognition of the costs of loneliness, in terms of public coffers and people’s health, is a relatively new phenomenon. That cities can be experienced as lonely places is nothing new. Responding to this, urban design focuses primarily on designing parks, housing, and plazas that bring people […]
From Footsteps to Data to Art: Seeing (through) a Bridge
From Footsteps to Data to Art: Seeing (through) a Bridge Sage Cammers-Goodwin and Michael Nagenborg Abstract While the guiding vision for IoT (Internet of Things) suggests that technology withdraws to the background, this paper explores the case of a physically visible, IoT-enabled footbridge to be placed in Amsterdam in summer 2020. The question is, […]