Hapticity and Citizen

Hapticity, the sensual experience of a building or space, should rule the actuality of living in a city. Juhani Pallasmaa, who coined the term as it is used here in her essay Hapticity and Time explains "Every significant experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of matter, space and scale are measured by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle" So it goes that every experience of place too is drank up though the various vestiges of sense. When one thinks of the house in which they grew up, surely there are sounds that accompany the red brick, smells that delight or unnerve, and a tangible memory of texture. We associate these experiences with a place, and often with a time. In such a way, the possibility of creating our own sense-based explanation of the city is inevitable.

According to the UN, by the year 2030, 60% of the global population is expected to live in cities. Where as fifty years ago most of the world population lived in agricultural settings, we have surpassed a point in which the majority of the world population now resides in urban centers. Urbanization, and the immense gravity of cities weighs politics, cultural bias, and the economies of the 21st century. Cities are it, and cities are going to continue to be. What does this mean to the citizens in this atmosphere of pure city? Surely our spiritual, emotional, and practical needs will have changed as a result of the density and influence of concrete versus the greenery of pastoral landscapes. We will, as a people have different priorities as we drive gridlocked roads towards the florescent meccas of food retrieval, than did our farming ancestors who traded beets for peas in a back fence neighborly transaction.

Citizenship, is the social contract between an individual and a larger group or idea. It could be social, political, or national in bearing. There is an important argument to made in shifting the primary focus of our doting attentions to the ramshackle concrete villages and canyons of blue glass we now find ourselves living in. and As a citizen of a city, we agree to the terms and conditions of city living, but never in our contract does it handcuff us to an experience of purely banal functionality, rough black tarmac, or harsh grids. Even if we have been compliant by our lack of previous involvement, we are beholden to now celebrate the sharp edges or alter them completely. To truly be a citizen of the city, we must partake in the poetic revitalization and impassioned intimacy with the space we inhabit. Pallasmaa says "Touch is the sensory mode which integrates our experience of the world and of ourselves. Even visual perceptions are united and integrated into the haptic continuity of the self; my body remembers who I am and where I am placed in the world." There is a desperate need for the newly emerging majority of city based citizens to inhabit their world with an affectionate knowing, a delighted activism, and lyric citizenry.

We participate in the art of living cities.