Paper short abstract:

Inspired by Raymond Lucas’ (2010) work on sensory notation, this paper explores modes of observing and representing sensory perceptions of urban space. We reflect on ways that mapping sensory, affective experience could inform social anthropology and urban practice through a participatory toolkit.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores notational mapping as a mode of representing sensory perceptions of urban space. Inspired by Raymond Lucas’s (2010) work on sensory notation and underpinned by our shared commitment to integrating participatory ‘citizen social science’ methodologies into both social anthropology and urban practice, we have developed a toolkit designed to record the sensory impact of urban spaces.

Anthropologists and cognate scholars have long examined the phenomenological and affective experience of place and landscape (e.g. Tilley 1994; Edensor 2005). Meanwhile, popular psycho-geographers like Ian Sinclair and Will Self have brought public attention to the way atmospheres and accreted histories of cities can be revealed through walking and immersive reflection.

At a policy level, the relationship between the built environment and social and psychological wellbeing is increasingly recognized, and yet for urban planners and practitioners, it can be difficult to build a practical rationale for this relationship. The emotional and psychological impact of urban planning interventions rarely figures in evaluation frameworks, which usually rely on functional indicators like traffic flow or pedestrian footfall.

Recognising both citizens’ expertise in their own neighbourhoods, and the lack of tools that give them a voice in planning decisions, our toolkit adapts Lucas’s notational system as a way to integrate sensory perceptions into urban practice, including haptic, aural, kinetic and emotional mapping. We reflect also on the constitutive relationship between technologies and the built environment, and our ongoing work to develop a sensory notation app that can generate useful data for architects, planners and communities.