76 DESIGNING SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Henrietta Street, Hulme, Manchester
This chapter1 focuses on residents’ sensorial experiences of the 24-hour city, highlighting the interaction between the physical environment and the emotional and sensorial responses of the people within it, that together co-produce the sensory 24hour city. As Irving states, ‘the city is not simply architecture alone, but a curious melding of ‘‘flesh and stone’’’ (Irving, 2004, citing Sennett, 1994), and it is this melding of flesh and stone that is considered in this chapter – the physical and sensual relationship that residents of the city have with where they live. While literature on the 24-hour city has focused on specific aspects of city development and management, such as the effects of alcohol on crime rates and behaviour, it has so far neglected the senses as a means of understanding and organising the city. The academic field of sensory cities is a developing one, and there is a burgeoning literature on sensory urbanism. However, these studies tend to focus on historical cities or on specific (usually minority) groups’ sensory engagements with particular cities.
VivaCity2020 starts to bridge this gap between the more policy-driven knowledge and understandings of 24-hour cities and the more subjective familiarity and experience of sensory cities, by using the theoretical ideas of sensory urbanism as tools for identifying residents’ use of and engagement with the city. With reference to the theoretical concepts of emplacement and displacement (Howes, 2005) and VivaCity’s empirical work with city-centre residents, this chapter concentrates on the sensory dimensions of being a resident in the 24-hour city. Furthermore, the chapter is used as a platform for raising some key issues that need to be addressed in the further development of 24-hour city centres. Data were gathered from residents in the cities of London, Manchester and Sheffield through the media of sound walks, interviews and photo surveys, and their voices are used to argue that the 24-hour city is a place rich with sensual encounters, and that these are highly significant components of people’s everyday urban experience. Ultimately it is argued that designing the 24-hour city necessitates an awareness of this sensory human engagement with the city. A sense of belonging Sensory engagement with the city is aptly described by Pallasmaa (2005: 40), who argues against the hegemony of the visual: ‘I confront the city with my body; … I experience myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and my body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.’ The materiality and sensoriality of the city are one through the medium of personal bodily experience; the city is a domain of sensory opportunities that change according to time, space, culture and traditions, and which the individual interacts with in the context of defining their own place within it.