The Sensory Experience and Perception of Urban

Spaces - Summary

The research paper focuses on the idea of sensory experience of an urbanscape. When we
walk around a place we tend to interact with the elements of the place. When I say interaction, I
don’t just mean buildings and people around. Even a garbage dump situated at one corner of
the street might qualify as an element of that place. And ​every element for that matter plays a
role in defining the place​. For example, garbage dumped all around the dustbin might
generate the definition of that place very different to when there’s a clean pocket for dumping all
the waste. The idea of not liking the improperly dumped garbage comes from the experience it
gives us i.e.​ the user experience​. The user experience in terms of ‘visual’, because we don’t
like the sight of spilled waste or in terms of ‘smell’, because we don’t like the unpleasant odour.
We’re able to generate these experiences based on our senses i.e. our ​sensory experience​.
Our sensory experience is based on our five senses - visual, touch, sound, smell, and taste.
The sensory experience that a place gives us largely affects the interaction that we have with
the place. For example, ‘visual cues’ in the area help in creating the image of space, ‘sound and
touch clues’ help in providing identity and territory to space, ‘taste’ helps in getting the meaning
of space and, ‘smell’ helps to recollect memories about the place.

What determines this sensory experience?

The sensory experience of urban spaces is composed of​ tangible and intangible attributes​.
Tangible attributes may include the manmade and natural features of an urban space. These
may include the use of lights, seating, plantation etc. All the attributes which may or may not
give the desired experience from people walking through that place may come under this.
Intangible attributes may include culture, festival and tradition of the place. These essentially are
responsible for differentiating one place from the other and thus play an important role in adding
an identity to the urban space.

For example, Badi Choupad and Amprapali Marg​, both are two well known streets in Jaipur
and both have almost similar tangible attributes like benches, sodium lights etc. but what makes
them different from each other is the flavour they carry. One is close to the culture of Jaipur and
hence portray the character of Jaipur by the use of material, color, arrangement, people etc.
while the other is significantly contemporary and thus miss the flavour of belonging to a certain
culture. Now, this doesn’t mean that design of one is better than the other. The comparison of
design and design features is a different topic altogether but it’s certainly assured that the
sensory experience that Badi Choupad gives is different from what one gets while walking
through Amprapali Marg. The sensory experience of urban spaces depends on tangible and
intangible attributes along with three aspects as activities, physical form and the meaning of
space.
I would attach two pictures of the two streets that I mentioned, without mentioning their names.
And hopefully, by the look of the picture one will be able to differentiate the ​‘flavour’​ that I
talked about previously.

Sensory experience and perception of urban spaces

A person senses the urban space, perceives them and navigates through the cities. The
interconnection of how our five senses grasp the image of a space largely decides our
experience of that space. The growth and the acceptance of any urban space can be seen as
how well that space is used by people which can be possible only when the space gives good
user experience to the people. While touch, smell, and taste provide information on the
‘near-space’ range​, visual and auditory systems can receive information over a greater range
as ​‘far-space’​. Sometimes, a space despite having enormous positive spatial elements and
classic intangible attributes might get affected by the one negative element because that
element may become successful in hindering the interaction of our senses with the space. For
example, the aura of the classic Rashtrapati Bhavan is completely destroyed by the pollution in
Delhi, because our senses are not able to interact with the space.

The paper identifies ​‘walking’​ around a city as method of experiencing the city. These walks
around the city help us build a sensory experience of the city wrt our five senses - predominant
visual sense, omnidirectional hearing sense, feels of the surrounding by smell, taste and touch
sense and, memories of that particular urban space. Thus, these can be regarded as in terms of
various senses like ‘smellwalks’ or ‘soundwalks’.

Urban spaces - Historic vs Contemporary

The paper lastly concludes by stating that wrt ​sensescapes​ there is more potential in historic
urban spaces when compared with contemporary urban spaces. The former is rich in sensory
experiences and hence there is a need for research in how these qualities and values of
historic cities and urban spaces can be preserved and continued. These may include traditional
markets, neighborhoods, public spaces, religious spaces, historic monuments etc. As per my
understanding, the reason for calling historic urban spaces rich in sensory experiences may be
because their experience comes with an attached identity whereas when we talk of
contemporary urban spaces; they don’t largely vary in their experiences because they’re mostly
similar everywhere. The question that I’m left with is, therefore, ​can we design contemporary
urban spaces with a unique identity without involving the history or culture of the place
where it is built?

- Ruchi Awasthi