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The growing field of sensory urbanism is changing the way we assess neighborhoods and projects:
When David Howes thinks of his home city of Montreal, he thinks of the harmonious tones of carillon bells and the smell of bagels being cooked over wood fires. But when he stopped in at his local tourism office to ask where they recommend that visitors go to smell, taste, and listen to the city, he just received blank stares.
"They only know about things to see, not about the city's other sensory attractions, its soundmarks and smellmarks," says Howes, the author of the forthcoming book The Sensory Studies Manifesto and director of Concordia University's Centre for Sensory Studies, a hub for the growing field often referred to as "sensory urbanism."
Around the world, researchers like Howes are investigating how nonvisual information defines the character of a city and affects its livability. Using methods ranging from low-tech sound walks and smell maps to data scraping, wearables, and virtual reality, they're fighting what they see as a limiting visual bias in urban planning.
[...] The best way to determine how people react to different sensory environments is a subject of some debate within the field. Howes and his colleagues are taking a more ethnographic approach, using observation and interviews to develop a set of best practices for good sensory design in public spaces. Other researchers are going more high-tech, using wearables to track biometric data like heart-rate variability as a proxy for emotional responses to different sensory experiences. The EU-funded GoGreenRoutes project is looking to that approach as it studies how nature can be integrated into urban spaces in a way that improves both human and environmental health.
[...] "Sensory perceptions are not neutral, or simply biological; whether we find something pleasant or not has been shaped culturally and socially," says Monica Montserrat Degen, an urban cultural sociologist at Brunel University London. Civic planners in both London and Barcelona are using her research on public-space perceptions and how "sensory hierarchies," as she refers to them, include or exclude different groups of people.
Degen cites the example of a London neighborhood where inexpensive eateries that served as hangouts for local youth were displaced by trendy cafes. "It used to smell like fried chicken," she says, but newer residents found that aroma off-putting rather than welcoming. "Now it smells like cappuccinos."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday June 19 2022, @03:56PM (6 children)
It's still a heck of a lot more pleasant than rural areas that actually smell like bull shit.
Although when it comes to urban smells, I suspect one of the more memorable is drunkard's piss in the subway.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Touché) by legont on Sunday June 19 2022, @04:53PM (1 child)
While cows are somewhat questionable, horseshit smells quite nice once one is used to it. But even cows are OK as long as it's not a concentration camp.
Cities are way worse as any and all establishments are trying to push your genetic buttons by burning fat.
I ride bike and smells I get is an important part of experience.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Sunday June 19 2022, @06:03PM
When I said "bull", I meant "bull", which usually means feedlot, which means giant lagoons of the stuff [nebraskapublicmedia.org] which regularly produce toxic levels of dangerous gasses. I didn't mind the smell when I worked briefly on an organic free-range dairy farm, but those are an entirely different world from what tends to happen to the male bovines.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @04:55PM (2 children)
Times Square nigger piss is the worst.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @05:16PM
Nazi scum should be locked up for life.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2022, @09:32PM
Unfortunately, pissing, like breathing, is a required life function for mammals.
We haven't learned yet how to deal with some of it.
Like public places.
We need to design decent pissoirs to process urea by biological microbial/plant based methods. The way wi do it now is akin to storing soaked pissed diapers in a closed pail so they ferment and stink.
People have an unmet need. They do what they have to do. They piss in the street. They piss in public transportation. The dogs at least can usually find a tree, until the humans cut them all down.
I believe we need to plant foliage for the purpose of promoting biological uptake of urea before it ferments into airborne ammonia. Just little alcoves trimmed into foliage so the humans can get relief too.
I remember one popular social spot when I was a kid where the proprietor planted a bunch of shrubbery along the outdoor area of his establishment. It was kinda obvious by the arrangement of foliage that it had a purpose. Didn't take long for others to see.
Had a little sink with a foot operated valve so one could wash hands, but if you went a little further around the corner, there were four little alcoves trimmed into the foliage on the other side. Always really green and lush with all that watering ( Southeast USA, Rural Alabama ).
Maybe a bit of genetic engineering would produce plant and microbial life optimized for nitrogen uptake, as these plants will be growing in extremely nutrient rich environs. The prunings themselves, mulched, would make a potent fertilizer.
Some people smell a stink in the subway.
I smell a way to snare that smelly stuff, and route it somewhere some good comes of it.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday June 19 2022, @08:58PM
Fertilizing the fields doesn't happen all the time. But the subway always smells like ass (or sweat, urine or just people). But as with most things I guess you eventually get used to it.
It's not that rural smells are somehow more pleasant all the time, it's just better most of the time. That said there are very different rural smells to, inland or coastal, if there is a lot of farmland etc. But large cities always smell bad. If you can't smell it you have been there for to long. I guess if there is a heavy rain there are a few moment of freshness until you are hit by the smell of wet garbage and humid people.