Dearq

Dearq | eISSN 2215-969X

Affective Urbanism: A Trans Approach to the City

No. 38 (2024-01-31)
https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq38.2024.04

Abstract

In this article, we explore how the affects influence and shape urban processes, transcending the hierarchical organization of its agents (bottom-up & top-down). However, neither of these approaches, nor their combinations, proves adequate to promote a trend that, due to wicked problems, inherently involves an affective connection with individuals, other entities, and the planet.

Building on Rittel and Webber's text (1973) addressing the challenges of urban planning in solving social problems, and Law's interpretation (2015) that turns wicked problems into benign problems, we can observe how the nature of urban social problems is inherently affective. 

We propose a path where urbanism can disrupt the bottom-up and top-down dualities based on the attributes that shape it, as it is the affects that permeate all human and more-than-human bodies. If cities are machines of urbanization, extending their heterogeneous networks beyond their territories, we need to address the movement of affects so that urbanism becomes a tool for coexistence on an already wounded planet.

Keywords: affective urbanism, affect theory, bottom-up, top-down, wicked problems, benign affects

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