City of unpleasant feelings. Stress, comfort and animosity in urban life

Bibliographic Data

ID3977583
AuthorsA Mubi Brighenti (0000-0002-7498-9857, University of Trento, corresponding author), Andrea Pavoni (0000-0002-8797-9981, Centro de Estudos sobre a Mudança Socioeconómica e o Território)
Year2019
Volume20
Issue2
Pages137-156
Publication date2019-02-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2017.1355065
OpenAlexW2737062247
LanguageEN
Citations received25
References cited52

The image of the city as a stressful place is an evergreen topic. In this article we review the imagination of urban stress, starting from Simmel's classic thesis that the modern city is an unavoidably psychic-stimulating environment potentially leading to stimuli overload. City dwellers are then supposed to counter stimuli overload with a series of adaptation strategies. However, the ways in which these phenomena can be conceptualised are varied. Historically, a shift of emphasis seems to have occurred from the classic conceptualisation of hyperaesthesia to the contemporary preoccupations with the design of comfortable atmospheres. Such atmospheres are, in fact, comfort bubbles. In the article, we tackle the aspirations and predicaments of such engineered atmospheres. In particular, we build on Sloterdijk's argument that, ultimately, bubbles fail to do away with stress, whereas for Simmel stress anaesthetised urbanites, Sloterdijk has pointed out that, rather, comfort itself stresses them. To better tackle the magmatic stratum of dissatisfaction that seems so coessential to urban life, in the final part of the article we focus on the notion of animosity. We suggest to conceptualise it as a type of disquiet that cannot be reduced to established recognisable interaction formats

Adaptation (eye · Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Epistemology · Feeling · Psychic · Sociology · Stress (linguistics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology · Urban Green Space and Health

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