The Affective City

Cities are not made only of stone: they harbor ways of life, practices, movements, moods, atmospheres, feelings. Yet the ineffable nature of affects has long deprived human passions of a meaningful role when it comes to observing urban space and envisioning its future transformation. With this book, we explore the contemporary city and its transitional conditions from a different perspective: a quest to understand how the space of collective life and the feelings this engenders are connected, how they mutually give form to each other. In an interdisciplinary collection of essays, The Affective City means to open a discussion on the “soft” presences animating the world of urban objects: beyond the city built out of mere things, this book’s focus is on the forces that make urban life emerge, thrive, flourish, but also wither, and sometimes die. A task crucial for the survival of cities as human habitats, in an urban world that – with every passing day – seems to draw closer a crisis.