• Cultivating an Urban Aesthetic

    Author(s):
    Arnold Berleant (see profile)
    Date:
    1986
    Subject(s):
    Urban ecology (Sociology), Aesthetics, City planning
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    perceptual awareness, urban city, human environment, urban experience, Urban ecology, Urban planning
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/w921-an94
    Abstract:
    The agricultural metaphor of my title is deliberate. It suggests the need for cultivating the urban environment, including the aesthetic dimension that is part of every place, so that it offers the conditions under which people will develop and flourish. Humane environments require time to grow and should emerge out of local needs, conditions, and traditions. What was once spontaneous urban growth of a proportion and scale to match the human body and activities that completed it must now be deliberately chosen and quickly accomplished. But the same organic principles apply. Planning under these conditions demands a gardener who is talented and sensitive, one who understands that the balance of differences among the components of an environment must be nurtured by being responsive to the distinctive qualities of each, to the interrelations among them, and to the unpredictabilities inherent in a complex and temporal process. This is the essential reciprocity of people and place, and the aesthetics of environment rests on a perceptual engagement between them. The capacity to cultivate the functional and the aesthetic as inseparable aspects of the same urban growth is what makes planning an art and the planner an artist. Can there be any act more profound or scope more significant? It must now be deliberately chosen and quickly addressed.
    Notes:
    Ch. 6 in Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Environment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 82-98. ISBN 978-1566393348. Reprinted as Ch. 3 in The Aesthetics of Human Environments, edited by Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview, 2007), pp. 79-91. ISBN 978-1551116853.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    1986
    Journal:
    Diogenes
    Volume:
    136
    Page Range:
    1 - 18
    ISSN:
    0392-1921
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial
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