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Humanizing Digital Reality pp 63–72Cite as

Urban Sensing: Toward a New Form of Collective Consciousness?

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Abstract

Cities have always been placed where the senses are constantly solicited. If as historian of art Michael Baxandall writes, “living in a culture, growing and learning to survive in it, involves us in a special perceptive training,” cities figure among the primary educators of civilizations. But this education presents negative counterparts. On streets and squares, sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste have a lot to process, too much sometimes. The amount of information with which the senses are confronted can prove overwhelming.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Baxandall (1985).

  2. 2.

    Corbin (1986).

  3. 3.

    Thompson (2002).

  4. 4.

    Zardini (2005).

  5. 5.

    Leloup et al. (2010).

  6. 6.

    Log 34, Spring/Summer 2015.

  7. 7.

    Ascher (2005).

  8. 8.

    Moussavi and Kubo (2006), Picon (2013).

  9. 9.

    Florida (2002).

  10. 10.

    Glaeser (2008). See also Glaeser (2011).

  11. 11.

    See the Lab’s site: http://senseable.mit.edu, consulted on 25 February 2017.

  12. 12.

    We have developed this approach in Picon (2015).

  13. 13.

    Kurgan (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Antoine Picon

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  1. Antoine Picon
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Correspondence to Antoine Picon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, Versailles, India

    Klaas De Rycke

  2. University of the Arts, Berlin, India

    Christoph Gengnagel

  3. Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Champs sur Marne, Australia

    Olivier Baverel

  4. Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

    Jane Burry

  5. School of Architecture + Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Caitlin Mueller

  6. ENSA Paris-Malaquais, Paris, France

    Minh Man Nguyen

  7. Philippe Rahm architects, Paris, France

    Philippe Rahm

  8. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen

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Picon, A. (2018). Urban Sensing: Toward a New Form of Collective Consciousness?. In: De Rycke, K., et al. Humanizing Digital Reality. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6611-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6611-5_7

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-6611-5

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