List of Figures
List of Contributors
Preface
Joe Blakey and Amy Barron
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Making Sense of the City
Joe Blakey and Amy Barron
2. Perspectives from Philosophical and Applied Urban Aesthetics
Sanna Lehtinen
3. Urban Aesthetics and Power: Branding Sensory Conviviality in London and Barcelona
Mónica Degen and Beatriz Guijarro Turégano
4. Aesthetics as Sensory Experience and the Embodied Practice of Bicycle Delivery Work
Josh Widera
5. Writing the City Clean: Sketching Conflictual Aesthetics of Street Art in Linz, Austria
Friederike Landau-Donnelly and Stefanie Fridrik
6. The Post-Race City: Borders, Freedom, and Imagination
Günter Gassner
7. The Walls of Berlin and Cairo: A Spatial Mnemonic Model
Taher Abdel-Ghani, Yara Mohamed, and Amr Ibrahim
8. Rancière, Aesthetics, and the Politics of the City-Scale
Joe Blakey
9. Cities and The Sixth Sense: The Aesthetics of Experimental Urbanisms
Julian Brigstocke
10. Sensing the ‘Public’ in Public Wall Art in Bangalore
Salila Vanka
11. Conclusion: What Next? Future Directions for Aesthetics and the City
Amy Barron and Joe Blakey
Index
Biography
Joe Blakey is a Political Geographer at the University of Manchester, UK, interested in conceptualising and understanding political change, aesthetics, and environmental knowledge politics. His research is driven by the need to understand the depoliticisation of marginalised voices and perspectives, and how knowledge about the environment is produced, contested, and mobilised in response to the global climate and ecological crises.
Amy Barron is a Social and Cultural Geographer at the University of Manchester, UK, interested in the lived experience of urban differences, inequalities, and social categories. These themes are often explored through the lenses of age, ageing, and the life-course.
Aesthetics and the City provides an insightful and rich set of contributions into how to make sense of urban worlds. Through its eleven chapters, the edited book makes the case for a sensory approach to the studying of the production of cities. It is a lovely addition to the field of urban studies.
- Professor Kevin Ward, The University of Manchester, UK
Aesthetics and the City teaches us that making sense of and reimagining cities requires understanding their aesthetic dimension. It is highly recommended for all urban scholars and professionals who want to explore how aesthetics intersects with urban life, influencing design visions, everyday experiences, and the broader conceptualisation of cities.
- Andrea Borsari PhD, Professor of Aesthetics, The University of Bologna, Italy
