Cities and the sixth sense: The aesthetics of experimental urbanism.

Brigstocke, Julian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2455-0504 2025. Cities and the sixth sense: The aesthetics of experimental urbanism. Blakey, Joe and Barron, Amy, eds. Aesthetics and the City, Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City, London: Routledge, (10.4324/9781003335993-9)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This chapter contributes to an analysis of aesthetics and the city by exploring Hannah Arendt’s notion of a ‘sixth sense’ – a sense that is not connected to a sensory organ, and does not itself generate sensation, but instead creates a distinctive feeling of ‘realness’. In Arendt’s thought, the essence of the sixth sense, or ‘community’ sense, is to be able to think and feel the world from the standpoint of others. The chapter develops this theoretical argument through an analysis of experimental urbanism projects around the Tijuana–San Diego international border which strive to open the border up to encounters with plurality and difference, and in so doing to cultivate a richer, plural, unbordered sixth sense, or ‘sense for reality’. Through an extended discussion of an Arendtian account of cities, architecture, and aesthetics, the chapter focuses on the significance of urban infrastructure as a form of ‘culture’, understood in the Arendtian sense as something which gathers and expresses desire and fantasy.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781032372358
Last Modified:	16 Sep 2025 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/181086

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item