The Sensory Experiencing of Urban Design. G. Rose

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2012 49: 3271 originally published online 2 April2012Urban StudMonica Montserrat Degen and Gillian Rose

MemoryThe Sensory Experiencing of Urban Design: The Role of Walking and Perceptual

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The Sensory Experiencing of Urban Design:The Role of Walking and PerceptualMemoryMonica Montserrat Degen and Gillian Rose

[Paper first received, September 2010; in final form, January 2012]

Abstract

Experience is conceptualised in both academic and policy circles as a more-or-lessdirect effect of the design of the built environment. Drawing on findings from aresearch project that investigated peoples everyday experiences of designed urbanenvironments in two UK towns, this paper suggests at least two reasons why sensoryencounters between individuals and built environments cannot in fact be under-stood entirely as a consequence of the design features of those environments.Drawing from empirical analysis based on surveys, ethnographic walk-alongs andphoto-elicitation interviews, we argue that distinct senses of place do depend on the

sensory experiencing of built environments. However, that experiencing is signifi-cantly mediated in two ways. First, it is mediated by bodily mobility: in particular,the walking practices specific to a particular built environment. Secondly, sensoryexperiences are intimately intertwined with perceptual memories that mediate thepresent moment of experience in various ways: by multiplying, judging and dullingthe sensory encounter. In conclusion, it is argued that work on sensory urbanexperiencing needs to address more fully the diversity and paradoxes produced bydifferent forms of mobility through, and perceptual memories of, builtenvironments.

Introduction: Urban Regenerationand Sensory Experience

Western urban policy and academic debate

have been dominated in recent years by the

implementation and impact of urban design

and regeneration strategies. Particular to the

Monica Montserrat Degen is in the Department of Sociology, Brunel University, London, UK.E-mail: [email protected].

Gillian Rose (corresponding author) is in the Department of Geography, The Open University,Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

49(15) 32713287, November 2012

0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online 2012 Urban Studies Journal Limited

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British urban renaissance agenda, forexample, has been a deliberate governmentemphasis on design excellence withinregeneration projects (Urban Task Force,

1999) and an implicit assumption that suchdesign directly affects peoples experiencesof place

good design can help create lively places with

a distinctive character; streets and public

spaces that are safe, accessible, pleasant to

use and human scale; and places that inspire

because of the imagination and sensitivity of

their designers (DETR/CABE, 2000, p. 8).

As importantly, many academic commenta-tors also assume that transformations in theurban built environment not only reflectwider structural political, economic, cul-tural and governmental changes, but alsoprofoundly alter the everyday experience ofurban space (Lefebvre, 1991; Hall andHubbard, 1998; Degen, 2008; Brenner and

Theodore, 2002; Cronin and Hetherington,2008).The specific changes in peoples experi-

ence sought by urban designers and policy-makers are various: one persistent hoped-for effect is a reduction in street crime, forexample. In this paper, we focus on anotherintended effect, which is the sensory experi-encing of urban environments. Recent yearshave seen an upsurge of research on the

senses, leading to what Howes (2006) hasdescribed as a sensory revolution in thesocial sciences. It is now commonplace toremark that the senses are part of peopleseveryday experiencing (recent discussionsinclude Mason and Davies, 2009; Kalekin-Fishman and Low, 2010; Degen, 2008). Ithas also been clearly established that sensoryexperiences are central to the design ofurban built environments. Academic writ-

ing on the design of post-industrial urbanchange has focused from its earliest texts onthe impact of the visual form of urban

regeneration projects, for example (Harvey,1990; Boyer, 1988). In a fiercely competitiveglobal economy, city landscapes are increas-ingly under pressure to perform as market-

able commodities, as brandscapes judgedby [their] ability to transform the sensationof the subject (Klingman, 2007, p. 6). Thishas led critics to emphasise the spectacular-isation of how the urban environment isseen (Boyer, 1988; Hannigan, 1998; Croninand Hetherington, 2008; Klingman, 2007;Lehtovuori, 2010). Critics also claim thatthe emphasis on marketing and brandingcities leads inevitably to a slew of visually

similar placescloned, banal, brandedlandscapes have typically been a product ofnew central city malls and regeneratedspaces (Tallon, 2010, p. 20)that rarelyengage the people who move through them(Lehtovuori, 2010, p. 103).

The research project on which this paperis based aimed from the start to investigatepeoples sensory engagement with designed

urban environments. Its analytical starting-point was Highmores (2009) social aes-thetic perspective. Inspired by GeorgSimmels writings, this refers to an analysisof

the sensual material life of objects, and the

subjects that interact with them. . [and]

with the way the sensual world greets the sen-

sorial body and with the affective forces that

are generated in such meetings (Highmore,2009, p. 10).

Acknowledging the sensual material life ofobjects underpinned the choice of two casestudy towns with distinct urban environ-ments; and a concern for subjects and sen-sorial bodies drove a mostly qualitativeresearch methodology focused on exploringhow people sensorily experienced those two

towns. The project took this approach in itsstudy of two towns in south-east England:Milton Keynes and Bedford. Both towns are

3272 MONICA MONTSERRAT DEGEN AND GILLIAN ROSE

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using design as a catalyst for changing theambience of their city centres, yet they arealso radically different in that Bedford is anold historical town while Milton Keynes is a

modernist new town. The aim of this arti-cle is both to demonstrate empirically asocial aesthetic perspective and analyticallyto expand it by examining the relationshipsbetween sensory experience and the shiftingmobilities and temporalities of everydayurban experience. We are particularly con-cerned to explore how these relationshipscreate a particular sense of place or, as Feldhas put it, how feelingful sensuality partici-

pate[s] in naturalising ones sense of place(Feld, 2005, p. 179).

The project was also driven by a convic-tion that most accounts of sensory urbanexperiencing neglect three key features.First, they neglect to investigate the immedi-ate,in situcorporealexperienceof the multi-ple urban dwellers of these spaces on a day-to-day basis (exceptions include Degen,

2008; Degen et al., 2008; Law, 2005, 2001;Adamset al., 2007). Although some researchhas focused on the ways in which regenera-tion policies impact on the lives of sociallyexcluded groups (see Gosling, 2008; Wilsonand Grammenos, 2005), almost no attentionhas been given to how built environmentsengage their users, nor to the diverse feltexperiences that such environments mightelicit. Yet, as Law reminds us, the street

looks and feels differently depending on theperspectives of those inhabiting urbanspaces (Law, 2005, p. 440). Secondly, whileresearch on contemporary urban change hasfocused on attempts by local authorities,planners and developers to create a newvisual order through the conscious stylisa-tion of urban space, such studies neglect toattend how the city is experienced through

multiple sensory modalities, not just the

visual. Thirdly, our research suggests thatwork on sensory urban environments needsto consider another aspect of those sensory

encountersnamely, how sensory percep-

tion is mediated by different and shiftingspatial and temporal practices. Here we will

suggest that there are two ways that sensory

encounters are shifted and altered: by partic-ular practices of spatial mobility; and by

memories of previous visits to the same orsimilar places.

This paper thus contributes to an emer-

ging body of work which aims to explore how

the embodied inhabitation of urban spacesfeels (Lefebvre, 1991; Tuan, 1977; Allen, 2006;

Degen, 2008; Edensor, 2005; Frers and

Meier, 2007; Grant, 2009; Lehtovuori, 2010;

Sidaway, 2009). It depends on fieldwork in

the two towns of Milton Keynes and Bedford,and the first section of the paper is a brief

introduction to the towns and to their plan-

ners focus on creating specific sensory

effects, based on interviews undertaken with

those planners. The second section sum-marises our methodology. The third section

of this paper then describes the distinct sen-

sory engagements with the town centres ofBedford and Milton Keynes by their regular

users. The last section explores how mem-

ories intertwine with sensory experiences,

and can mediate those experiences in various

ways. The conclusion suggests the conse-quences of this argument for sensory

approaches to urban space.

Sensory Experience and UrbanDesign in Bedford and MiltonKeynes

In 2003, both Milton Keynes and Bedford

were designated by the UK government asgrowth areas, which has led to an intensifica-

tion of design regeneration projects in both

city centres. In this section, we briefly out-line the main strategies that have been shap-

ing both town centres in recent years, andthe planners and designers expectations of

their effects.

EXPERIENCING URBAN DESIGN 3273



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Milton Keynes was designed in the late1960s as a new town and currently has apopulation of 230 000. Its city centre has atits core a large modernist building, opened

in 1979 and designed as a covered highstreet. Originally conceived as a public spaceopen to the surrounding streets (Walker,1994), the building was handed over to pri-vate ownership in the early 1990s and isnow closer to a shopping mall than a publichigh street. It was joined at its western endin 2000 by an extension designed in a morepost-modern style. In 1999, the CentralMilton Keynes Review decided that the

1970s development plan for Milton Keynesneeded to be overhauled in light of theurban growth schemes spearheaded by theLabour government, and a new CentralMilton Keynes Development Frameworkwas adopted in 2002. According to onedesign and planning manager, the frame-work is regarded as a tool to make the citycentre more attractive to more people by

changing its feel

One of the main criticisms of central Milton

Keynes was that it did not feel like a city

centre, that it felt like a business park. You

had a series of separate uses dispersed around

a large geographical area . So, the principles

of the Development Framework are . to

make it feel much more vibrant and mix up

the uses more (SW, English Partnership/MK

Partnership Design and Planning Manager).

We can see here how the design of theurban centre is conceived as a socio-spatialmanagement tool to bring into being a newexperiential landscape (Madanipour, 1996).Design strategies are regarded as directlyaffecting the feel and atmosphere of thecentre of Milton Keynes; as a PrincipalUrban Designer told us, design should

enrich peoples experiences.In contrast to Milton Keynes, Bedford is

an historical market town, with a popular

market and a small covered shopping centrearound a traditional high street. Over thepast decade, Bedford Borough Council hasbeen involved in an extensive redevelop-

ment programme of the towns centre.Much of the town centre was pedestrianisedin the 1980s; over the past decade, it hasundergone an environmental improvementscheme which has involved the installationof raised flowerbeds, a small sculpture play-ground for children, a number of sculpturalplay installations and some modern streetfurniture, as well as the redesign of severalpublic spaces such as a run-down square

which had a large fountain installed. Here,too, design is regarded as a catalyst to attractboth new businesses and new users to thetown centre

we want people to come and spend more time

and more money. . As a designer you are

trying to make things more attractive . If

you improve the vibrancy certainly commer-

cially of the town centre, it gives people morechoice of what they can do here (PN, Bedford

Design Group).

Such views highlight the increasing impor-tance of the experience economy to contem-porary cities, confirming that

atmosphere, character, and sensorial qualities

are becoming key factors in the definition of

place, even from an economic perspective(Zardini, 2008, p. 24).

These design strategies in Bedford weresummarised precisely as aiming for a newsensory feel to the town centre; anotherinterviewee said that the centre currentlyfeels a bit like sandpaper, rough and ready,whereas he wanted to transform it into

a very fine sandpaper where youve got a very

smooth, elegant feel to the place. [So we need

to] transform it from a very tired town in




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many places to one which oozes elegance and

quality and that will then be reflected in the

value of spend, the footfall and the success at

the end of the day of the town centre (TR,

Chairman of Bedford BID).

From the discussion so far, then, we can see

that urban design practice in places like

Milton Keynes and Bedford assumes that the

everyday human experiencing of the built

environment is shaped to a significant degree

by the physical qualities of that design. Thisis also the assumption held by the urban

design literature: that the design of buildings,

and the spaces between buildings, have a sig-nificant influence upon, even if they do not

entirely determine, the human experience ofthe built environment (Carmona, 2009;

Dovey, 1999; Madanipour, 1996). Now,

while it is important to note again that this is

not the only aim of excellent urban design,

this paper now turns to exploring how these

redesigned urban centres sensorially engage

the users of those places.

Methods: Surveys and Walk-alongs

In examining how people experienced the

centres of Bedford and Milton Keynes, arange of methods were used. Three are core

to this paper. First, to access the general

sense of place of both locations, we con-

ducted a survey of 397 people in Bedfordand 384 in Milton Keynes over the course of

a week. Participants were chosen at randomwithin the shopping centre or high street.

The aim was to find out why they were visit-

ing the town centres, what they were doing

there and how they perceived them. Five

questions were asked

(1) Why are you here today?

(2) Do you come here often?(3) Do you like this part of Milton Keynes

town centre/Bedford town centre?

(4) Is there anything you really like or reallyhate about the Milton Keynes shoppingcentre/Bedford town centre?

(5) If you had to describe this place which

three words would you use?

To access the individual and immediateexperiencing of these two places, we devel-oped the walk-along method, amalgamat-ing Kusenbachs (2003) go-along methodwith a photo-elicitation interview a weekafter the walk (see also Latham 2003; Masonand Davies, 2009). The walk-along consistedof the researcher accompanying individuals

(sometimes with families and friends) in aroutine walk through the town centre.Participants were briefed beforehand thatwe wanted to accompany them on an ordi-nary walk while they were doing their dailychores and that they should comment onanything they found noteworthy in their useof the town. The length of the walk-alongsvaried according to the activities pursued:

sometimes a hurried 30 minutes with anindividual rushing in their lunch break tobuy a gift; at other times several hours witha family doing their errands and havingcoffee breaks. We recorded the conversa-tions during the walk-along and occasion-ally prompted the participant to commenton specific features of the environment,focusing on newly incorporated designdetails such as pieces of public art, street fur-

niture or a new water feature. We also askedparticipants to take photographs of thingsthat particularly struck them on our walk.These photographs were used as a basis for afollow-up interview in which participantsreflected on their experience of the walk andon the town centres more generally. Theaim of such elicitation was to grant

autonomy to the interviewee to direct

research encounters, enabling their own per-

sonal experience and frameworks of meaning

to be prioritised (Keightley, 2010, p. 61).




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Middleton, 2010). Walking, as DeCerteau(1984) observed, is an everyday practicethrough which urban space is made.Comparing walk-alongs in Bedford and

Milton Keynes, it became evident that dif-ferent ways of walking integrate quite dis-tinct sensory impressions.

In Milton Keynes, there is

a tendency for it to be like a two-way street.

You find people walking in synch with each

other, so if you want to go across its really

hard . It kind of forces people to do this

back and forth walking thing, and you kind of

end up forming.

streams of traffic (Susan).

Thus, participants in Milton Keynes had atendency to have very routinised patterns ofwalk, almost being on autopilot

The implication here is that we do not have to

think about the way we move through urban

space: our body feels its way (Hubbard, 2006;

quoted in Middleton, 2010, p. 583).

Walking in Milton Keynes was described byour research participants as an isolating andlonely experience

[a] very useful but often soulless experience,

[an] impersonal convenience. You are meet-

ing people that are in a position of a con-

strained social environment (Chris).

This echoes Simmels (1903/1971) argu-ments of the alienating effects of modernurban experience. Most of our participantshad a clear mental route mapped out beforeentering the shopping building as shops arelaid out in a standardised way

Youve got a particular navigation to walk

around. And youve got all the maps to tell

you where to go, and the maps are categorised

by different types of shops (Mike).

According to one participant, this fostered aprogrammed and quick form of walk-ing. Ironically, precisely due to the sensoryuniformity of the environment, the monot-

ony of the place.

its straight lines andangles (Samantha), the shopping mall isexperienced as confusing; people get lostand rely on maps for way-finding. The regu-lated temperature, the constant backgroundmusic and announcements that go mainlyunnoticed, and the controlled lighting, makeit feel like

being in a swimming pool . Its such a con-

centration of shops and they are all really

busy. theres no kind of break between it

. theres no kind of relief from it (Stu).

One can identify here a relationship notonly between the design of the built envi-ronment and peoples sensory experiences(the space, the light, the repeated architec-tural elements), but also between the envi-

ronment, sensory experiences and the waypeople walk.In Bedford, in contrast, walking was expe-

rienced as slower-paced, less programmedand described in terms of ambling andstrolling. Bedfords organic street plan andits diverse architecture, which juxtaposesbuildings from the 1960s next to art-decoand Tudor buildings, creates disjointed sen-sory experiences: odd kinds of contrast

(Burt). Overall, users do not circulate in thecity centre in an ordered way but, as Taraexplains, in a spidery-like movement; shethen elaborates, chaotically, I back track alot. Ill go somewhere, and I think oh Imissed that place and I shoot back.Research participants used alleyways, back-streets and passages to move from one areaof town to the next. Another walk-along par-ticipant elaborates: we dont really have a

sort of routine, thats why we tend to walkback and forth . (Michael). Bedfords




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contrasting physical and sensory environ-ment produces a multiplicity of patterns ofwalk, sometimes quicker, then slower, asindividuals react to different forms of sen-

sory stimulation around them such as thesplashing noise of a fountain, the musicfrom a street busker, the smell of chips,hot dogs and onions coming from theburger van which, as one respondent toldus, identified Bedford as Bedford. Thewalk-alongs also revealed distinct sensorymappings for different areas of town. Thesmells of exotic foods, the many lan-guages spoken and its colours make the

market very multicultural; then you getlike into [the pedestrian area] and youvegot all the coffee shops, and there aresmaller businesses, so you can sort of tellwhich are part of the town youre in(Michael). In ways that Milton Keynesdoes not, Bedford illustrates Felds descrip-tion of sensory synesthesia as

constant shifts in sensory figures and grounds,constant potentials for multisensory or cross

sensory interactions or correspondences.

Figure/ground interplays, in which one sense

surfaces in the midst of another that recedes,

in which positions of dominance and subor-

dination switch or co-mingle, blur into

synesthesia (Feld, 2005, pp. 180181).

This specific sensory constellation is again a

consequence both of urban materiality andof specific walking practices.

It should be evident by now that thesenses are key in assembling and re-assembling distinct senses of place in bothtown centres in which smell, touch andsound are just as important as what isseen. Sensory assemblages are convenednot only by the material affordances of thebuilt environment, however. They are also

convened by the specific walking practicesthat

give their shape to spaces. They weave places

together. In that respect, pedestrian move-

ment forms one of these real systems whose

existence in fact makes up the city

(DeCerteau, 1984, p. 97).

In particular, our data demonstrate how

specific walking practices are crucial to

making up the distinct sensory patterns of

different urban environments.

Experiencing Bedford and MiltonKeynes II: The Importance ofPerceptual Memory

The previous section argued that walkingpractices mediate the encounter between

people and the sensory qualities of built

environments. This section turns to anothermediator between the senses and the town

centres of Bedford and Milton Keynes:

memory.Current work on the sensory experien-

cing of urban spaceas the previous section

impliesfocuses very much on the moment

of experiencing and hence on the unfolding

flow of the present. As Frers (2007, p. 29)

notes, taking the perspective of the actorsthemselves in this body of work entails

following the permanent and live unfold-

ing of actions and events. This focus on thesubjective, experiential and performative

present means, first, that engaging with con-temporary work on affect is problematic(for discussion, see Rose et al., 2010); and,

secondly, that there has been little interest

in interrogating the temporality of urban

experiencing (Seremetakis, 1994, p. 7).

However, as Halbwachs (1992, pp. 168

169) remarks, following Bergson, there are

. no perceptions without recollections.Many urban scholars have explored the

role of memory in relation to cities, ofcourse. Most of this work, however, has




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turned away from what has been seen as theindividualism of Bergsons thought (Staigeret al., 2009, p. 5) to offer interpretive read-ings of cultural identity as embedded in the

symbolism of building and landscape design(Atkinson, 2007; Boyer, 1994; Dwyer, 2004;Forest et al., 2004; Hebbert, 2005; Hannaet al., 2004; Hoelscher and Alderman, 2004;Inwood, 2009; Mills, 2010; Rose-Redwood,2008; Rodger and Herbert, 2007). Somescholars have also explored the uncannyfeeling that places are haunted by ghosts ofthe past (Della Dora, 2006; Edensor, 2005;Pile, 2005; Degen and Hetherington, 2001).

Far less attention has been paid to the waywhat might be called everyday, more mun-dane memories inflect the experiencing ofbuilt environments. Yet as Jones notes

Memory is on and working all the time, in

our bodies, our subconscious, through our

emotions. It reconfigures moment by

moment who we are and how we function.

Memory is not just a retrieval of the pastfrom the past, it is always a fresh, new cre-

ation where memories are retrieved into the

conscious realm and something new is cre-

ated in that context (Jones, 2003, p. 27).

In Bedford and Milton Keynes, it was pre-cisely on-going ordinary, everyday mem-ories that mediated encounters betweenbuildings and individual people. As

Keightley points out, memories are not justmeanings about the past but are rather

a process of making sense of experience, of

constructing and navigating complex tem-

poral narratives and structures and ascribing

meaning not only to the past, but to the pres-

ent and future also (Keightley, 2010, p. 56).

Such retrievals are of various kinds and,

while their content certainly varied amongour individual research participants, it isnonetheless possible to suggest that

ordinary memories have three roles in theexperiencing of urban environments inMilton Keynes and Bedford in the present,in each case mediating the sensory into

something new.

Memory and Multiple Encounters

The first way in which memory affects thesensory experiencing of Bedford and MiltonKeynes town centres is when the experien-

cing of the built environment in the presentis overlaid with memories of how that same

environment was encountered in the past. In

both Bedford and Milton Keynes, researchparticipants had very clear memories of howthese towns were once different from theircurrent form, and recalling these memorieswas a central part of how they experiencedthe towns now.

This was particularly the case in Bedford.The walk-alongs were especially useful inrevealing how important an individualsmemories are to their experiencing of thetown centre. Sally evoked a shopping streetin Bedford 50 years ago as she walkedthrough it one day in 2008, overlaying itscurrent pedestrianisation and chain storeshops with a street full of traffic, the bigschool and a wide range of independentshops, including a glamorous department

store where elegant ladies in frocks wentshopping. The head of Bedfords Economic

and Regeneration department spent most ofhis walk-along rehearsing his various suc-cesses and future plans, but was provokedby a question about Bedfords smells intorecalling a powerful memory from very,very many years ago: there was a fabuloussmell of a traditional coffee shop and thewhole town smelt of that aroma. Anotherwalk-along participant told us that he justliked looking at old buildings and thinking

of people using these places in olden times.A more general sense of how Bedfords

town centre has a history carried in the




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memories of its users was also clear in thesurvey, which heard many people remarkingon aspects of the changed built environ-ment. These included both the disappear-

ance of old buildings and the changedappearance of the ones that remainedBedfords faded grandeur, to quote onerespondentand also on the disappearanceof independent shops and the dominance ofchain stores.

Memories in Milton Keynes reflected thetowns much shorter history. One walk-alongparticipant recalled coming up from Londonto visit the original centre not long after it

opened in 1979, while another rememberednot being allowed to roller-skate in the centreas a girl. Our survey found that many peoplerecollected how the centre had changed evenin its short lifespan: for example, in notingshops that had closed to be replaced byothers. Moreover, a desire to have such mem-ories of other landscapes layering the presentone was evident in a small survey undertaken

by the project in the newer centre, which isbuilt around an oak tree. Early in 2009, thelocal newspaper announced that the treeseemed to be dying. Our survey asked peoplewhat they thought of the oak tree and, if itdid die, what they would like to see in itsplace. Of the 60 respondents, 44 replied thatthey would want another oak tree. The treewas loved partly as a piece of nature amongall the architecture and concrete, but also

as a reminder of what had been on the sitebefore the shopping centres had been built:fields and heritage.

Memories of how places were once dif-ferent were thus pervasive in both Bedfordand Milton Keynes; indeed, Burt in Bedfordanticipated such a role for his memories inthe future when he commented that, if theugly bus station in Bedford was ever pulleddown and redeveloped, he would miss

being able to complain about it: that is, heanticipated a future encounter with a build-ing that depended on the remembered

presence of its absent predecessor. This sug-gests that sensory engagements with placeare often mediated by memories of thatenvironment as it used to be, emphasising

Anderson and Wylies (2009) argumentthat materiality is not simply what is physi-cally present. Buildings, streets and squaresmay be seen, heard and smelt throughmemories of what was once there but areno longersmells, roller-skating, fields,buildings, glamourso that the sensoryexperiencing of built environments is notentirely a consequence of the present mate-riality of those buildings.

Remembering and Judging

Many research participants in both placesalso engaged with these two town centres byremembering other buildings and urbanspaces they were familiar with from theirpast. The walk-alongs and follow-up inter-views consistently produced, unpromptedby the researchers, more or less extendedcomparisons between Bedford and MiltonKeynes with other places (and sometimeswith each other). That is, encounters withone town provokes memories of otherplaces. Milton Keynes was compared with

Leeds, Brighton, Bletchley, Birmingham,Barcelona and Osaka, and to Australian and

South African shopping malls. Bedford wascompared with St Neots, Leicester, Milton

Keynes, Cambridge, Northampton, Oxford,Exeter, Salisbury, Watford, Luton, St Albansand Brighton (all medium-sized towns inthe UK), as well as Birmingham, London,Lisbon, Munich, Los Angeles, Pisa,Washington DC, Spain and Brazil. This sortof comparative habit has also been identifiedby Amdur and Epstein-Pliouchtch (2009) intheir study of a bus station. Similarly, thisstudy also found that comparisons were

made between specific aspects of two places.The comparisons between the South African

or Australian shopping malls with Milton




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Keynes shopping centre was in both casesin relation to their relative sizes, for exam-ple, while Bedford was compared withBrighton in terms of how many independent

shops each town had.Importantly, these comparisons were

almost always made in the context of a judge-ment being passed on some aspect of thetown centre in Bedford or Milton Keynes.And this is another way in which the sensoryencounters with one place were mediated bymemories of another. Stus comparison withOsaka led him to conclude that the shoppingcentre in Milton Keynes was bad, verydepressing, while Taras comparison with

Brighton was part of a complaint about thelack of independent shops in Milton Keyneswhich meant that she found it a visually unin-

teresting place to browse around. Bedford,meanwhile, came off badly in comparisonsmade by some research participants with, forexample, St Ives (greener), Cambridge (morebeautiful) and Milton Keynes (more accessi-

ble), while others thought it had more char-acter than Milton Keynes.This then is a second way in which the

sensory experiencing of these two towncentres is mediated by memory: memoriesof other places induce judgements abouttheir different sensory qualities. Thus thelight, geometry, colour and smoothness ofMilton Keynes is felt, but also evaluated asbland, modern or sterileits smooth and

shiny, said Tara, and possibly quite sterilebecause of thatwhile the rough textural-ity of Bedford is evaluated as part of the

towns character: its made a differencethat theyve got the bricks on the floor,said Cecile approvingly of part of the pedes-trianised area in Bedfords town centre.

Memory Dulling The Town Centre and

The Shopping CentreThe third way in which memory shapes the

experiencing of town centres is the

remembering of previous visits to these twotowns and others, not in order to exploretheir differences as the previous sub-sectiondiscussed, but in order to mark their same-

ness. The previous sub-section emphasisedhow memories of visits to other places veryoften produced some sort of judgement onthe case study towns, and that this wasoften to compare Bedford or MiltonKeynes, favourably or unfavourably, withanother place. That is, memories of otherplaces quite often emphasised differencesbetween those two towns and others.However, such persistent comparative work

by our research participants also seemed toproduce another effect, which was a clearsense of the similarities of Bedford withother town centres, and Milton Keynes withother shopping centres.

Alongside the richly evocative sensoryimpressions that we obtained during the walk-alongs in particular, repeated visits to the towncentres affect encounters with the sensory qua-

lities of the built environment by dulling theintensity of those qualities. All of the partici-pants in the qualitative stages of this projectwere regular users of the town centres underinvestigation, and this produced a familiaritywith the centres which fundamentally affectedtheir experiencing of them. As one of themsaid, comparing her initial enthusiasm for thecentre when she first arrived in Milton Keyneswith her current attitude towards it, Im just

over it. Similarly, one walk-along participantin Bedford told us that we are so used to thetown . we dont really sort of pay muchattention.

The data also evidence a widespread feel-ing that these two town centres do not evokeany particularly intense experience, sensoryor otherwise. This became clear in the largesurvey. The term most frequently used todescribe Milton Keynes was nice, which

appeared 194 times in the survey. Bedfordwas also niceused by 164 respondentsand, in Bedford, 194 respondents also used




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the term alright to describe the towncentre. Indeed, a common response to oursurvey questions about the town centres wasa faint sense of surprise that anyone should

be particularly interested in them, with a lotof people struggling to find three words thatwould describe a centre. Moreover, it wasevident that most people do not expecteither Bedford or Milton Keynes to be espe-cially striking or impressive because thetowns are understood as specific kinds ofplaces: Milton Keynes is just a shoppingcentre and Bedford is just a town centre.Its not a city, its just a town, said one

survey respondent in Bedford, as if that wasall that we needed to know about the place,while a walk-along participant describedwalking through Bedford town centre asyou just pass it, its just town with stan-dard sorts of buildings. Milton Keynes,meanwhile, was nothing special, just abunch of shops, according to one respon-dent: its just a shopping centre, its ok .

None of these responses suggests intensesensory engagement with these urbanspaces; rather, the responses imply anacknowledgement of a certain generic qual-ity to these town centres. And that genericquality is identified in part, we assume, bymemories of visits to other, more-or-lesssimilar places that are also town centresand shopping centres. After all, MiltonKeynes may be the most striking shopping

centre in the UK architecturally (Jewell,2001), but in terms of what you actually dothere it is no different from all the othershopping centres in the UK and beyond.Similarly, although Bedford has a delightfulriver embankment and a much-lovedfamily-run hardware store, in other ways itis little different from most other medium-sized market towns in the UK. Its a towncentre, the same as any other town centre,

as one of our respondents averred.Memories of other visits to such placesseem to be working, then, not only to

mediate sensory encounters by making

comparisons between them, but also todevelop a typology of places which has the

effect of making them less interesting, less

engaging, and with less sensory impact.Once again, then, a particular sort of

memory can be seen to be working to inflect

sensory encounters with urban spaces. This

echoes Bergsons claim that

There is no perception which is not full of

memories. With the immediate and present

data of our senses, we mingle a thousand

details out of our past experience (Bergson,

1911, p. 24).

Memories of how places used to be can

multiply sensory engagement; memories of

other places can entail judgements that can

be very negative in relation to a town centre

and thus disengage an individual from full

sensory immersion in the urban environ-

ment; and familiarity with these two spaces

can also reduce their sensory feel, particu-larly when they are understood as particular

types of places. In none of these situationsdo memories engage with what the litera-

ture on urban memory would understand

as a collective memory implicated in cul-tural identity; yet their effect is to mediate

significantly sensory encounters with the

built environments of Milton Keynes and

Bedford.

Conclusions

Urban studies scholars and urban policy

practitioners agree that, increasingly, the

aim of design interventions into urban

space is to alter the experience of that space

for its human inhabitants. Urban environ-

ments are more and more often designed in

order to be distinctive, vibrant and beauti-ful, thus creatingor so the argument

goesmemorable sensory experiences for




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the people who pass through them (Allen,2006; Klingman, 2007; Lonsway, 2009;Thrift, 2004). This paper has engaged withthis argument, first, by arguing that urban

spaces are indeed experienced with feeling(see also Roseet al., 2010). Even people vis-iting rather ordinary town centreslikethose of Bedford and Milton Keynescandescribe a very rich range of sensory engage-ments with those places. These encountersare multisensory. Sight, touch, sound andsmell in particular are all part of how thesetowns are experienced. And these experi-ences of place vary considerably from one

place to another. The smooth marble andglazing of Milton Keyness shopping centre,for example, provokes feelings of light andsmoothness; the varied surface textures ofBedfords buildings encourage people tocompare the town with sandpaper. Ourresearch thus confirms what many othersscholars have also noted

Material culture is neither stable nor fixed,but inherently transitive, demanding connec-

tion and completion by the perceiver

(Seremetakis, 1994, p. 7).

Specific forms of built environment affordspecific forms of sensory experience.

However, while human sensory experi-ence can be understood as being embeddedin material environments, and as provoked

by specific aspects of them, urban spaces donot create experiences in a straightforwardmanner. The case studies discussed heresuggest that a more complex analysis isrequired, for two reasons.

First, the sensory experiencing ofBedford and Milton Keynes was signifi-cantly mediated by the specific walkingpractices that predominate in those twoplaces. Sensory accounts of the city thus

have to take account not only of the sen-sing body, but of how the sensory body ismoving through urban space.

Secondly, a certain sort of rememberingalso mediates the experiencing of urbanbuilt environments. In Bedford and MiltonKeynes, regular users of the town centres

were both highly engaged in and articulateabout the sensory qualities of the built envi-ronment; yet they were also over it to sucha degree that they did not notice their sur-roundings. This paradox of attentive sensoryengagement experiences in places simulta-neously understood to be at best nice canbe understood, we would argue, by payingmore attention to the working of particularkinds of memory. Seremetakis (1994) argues

that one of the most important ways thatthe perceiver creates the completion of amaterial urban environment is by acts ofmemory. And, in counter-position to mostof the literature on memory in urban places,the paradox of sensory experiencing we areaddressing here does not involve collectivecultural identity. Rather, our research parti-cipants experiences of these two places was

infused with what Seremetakis calls percep-tual memory

Perceptual memory as a cultural form, is not

to be found in the psychic apparatus of a

monadic, pre-cultural and ahistorical seer,

but is encased and embodied out there in a

dispersed surround of created things, sur-

faces, depths and densities that give back

refractions of our own sensory biographies

(Seremetakis, 1994, p. 129).

Perceptual memory was at work as our par-ticipants walked around Bedford andMilton Keynes, responding to specific cre-ated things and surfaces not only in termsof those things and objects material quali-ties, but also in relation to the participantsown, remembered, sensory biographies. Toinvert Keightleys (2010, p. 58) claim,

remembering is not just a performancerooted in lived contexts but is also anarticulation of individual psychologies.




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Such remembering is a continual processand produced not only explicit sensoryengagements with the two towns, but alsothe effect of a series of questions for our

participants: how was this place different inthe past? How is it different from otherplaces Ive visited? How is it the same asother places Ive been to?

This effect mediates the sensory percep-tion of the urban environment. Recallinghow this place was different in the pastmeans that the research participants werenot engaging solely with the urban environ-ment as it currently exists, but also in rela-

tion to how it looked, smelt and sounded inthe past. Noting how Bedford and MiltonKeynes are different from other placesresearch participants could remember visit-ing invokes a series of comparisons and jud-gements that again mediate the immediateexperiencing of those two towns. And assert-ing that Bedford and Milton Keynes are justthe same as other town centres and shopping

centres establishes them as types ratherthan unique urban environments, onceagain allowing their immediate sensoryimpact to be reflected upon and, in this case,dulled. As Eizenberg (2010) argues, this on-going remembering of other places and ofprevious visits to the same placebothassimi-lates a person into the experienced placeandconstantly makes reference to other placeselsewhere. It thus accounts for the paradoxi-

cal sensibility to, as well as indifferencetowards, the built environment articulatedby our research participants. All this suggeststhat the turn away from Bergson and theinsistence on the collective, cultural natureof memory in urban spaces may be prema-ture, when perhaps what we are seeing inthese case studies is the evidence of purememory emerging

the virtual whole of the continuous prolon-

gation of past experience into the present .

continually limited by mental functions

subordinated to the activity of the body

(Burton, 2008, p. 329).

In conclusion, we agree that work exploring

the multisensory nature of designed urbanenvironments is valuable for understanding

some of the key changes occurring to many

towns and cities in the early 21st century.However, we would also argue that, given

the importance of distinct modes of mobi-

lity and of perceptual memory to the med-iation of that multisensoriality among the

research participants in this project, such

work needs to pay much more attention to

these processes in its account of how urban

environments are experienced.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by the Economic and

Social Research Council (grant number RES-

062-23-0223).

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