Affective Urbanism: A Trans Approach to the City

Abstract

In this article, we explore how the affects influence and shape urban processes, transcending the hierarchical organization of its agents. Bottom-up and top-down relationships represent organizational structures associated with power dynamics, ranging from more institutionally vertical to diverse and collective horizontal directions. 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. Critical affect theory provides a framework for contemplating urban processes from alternative perspectives. 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 new path where affective urbanism can disrupt the bottom-up and top-down dualities based on the attributes that shape urbanism, 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