Sensing the Urban Fabric

Abstract

Drawing upon the more literal connotations of fabric, Chapter 5 is concerned with the sensory, affective and craftlike aspects of cities. Reviewing Bahktin’s formulation of the ‘carnivalesque’, it ventures into a series of different urban aesthetic ‘modes’, intentionally fragmentary and kaleidoscopic, to draw out some of the many ways cities are sensed, felt, experienced, lived in and travelled through. The chapter continues by reflecting on the possibility of a city craft and, following Alexander’s work in the 1970s, of the global urban design patterns that might guide it. The chapter concludes with an exhortation to design new ‘comedies of the commons’, patterns for a reciprocally rewarding collective urban life together.