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Atmospheric Affordances And The Sense Of Urban Places, Vesa Vihanninjoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The places of our everyday lives constitute a fundamental condition for the sensibility and the meaningfulness of our urban experience. Such places afford us various things, and it is precisely the afforded uses and actions that remarkably affect or even define our experience of a place. It is, however, crucial to ask what makes certain place-based affordances visible to us while others remain invisible. Why do we experience and interpret a place as a “place-for-something,” and what is the role of aesthetics in this process? Not all place-based affordances are equally visible to everyone, and the meaning of personal and …