Comprehending the City: From Perception to Imagination
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2024-2-103-119
The article analyses various aspects of comprehending the city as a cultural phenomenon, which has both a material, visible side and an imaginary, conceivable side. The author identifies the correlation of perception, representation and imagination in the process of understanding the city and argues that imagination plays a constitutive role in this process. It is emphasised that in urban studies the prevailing approach to the city is focused primarily on the consideration of its visual parameters. However, auditory, olfactory, tactile and other characteristics are significant in the process of perceiving urban spaces, since they also influence the formation of the city’s image and make this image more saturated and multidimensional. Based on the work “Imagination and perception” by P. F. Strawson, the author proves that imagination is a necessary component of the city perception. In addition, knowledge about the city and comprehending the city are considered in the article as different cognitive levels. Representation is associated with the concept of the city, and imagination is associated with comprehending the idea of the city, grasping its meaning. The increasing role of imagination in the process of cognition of sociocultural reality is determined by the change in the interpretation of this process itself in postnonclassical science and philosophy of culture. In the postnonclassical approach, the process of cognition is understood not simply as a mirror reflection of reality, but as the construction of an image of reality in consciousness, conditioned by specific linguistic, symbolic and cultural practices. The understanding of imagination in its transcendental dimension (the productive imagination in Kant’s terminology) is complemented in the article by an analysis of its sociocultural dimension. From the author’s point of view, this dimension is primarily important for understanding the city as a symbolic space of meanings that determine the uniqueness of a particular topos and its value for a person.
Keywords: urban studies, urban epistemology, multisensory perception, urban imaginary, cognitive representation, productive imagination
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Issue: 2, 2024
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 103 — 119
Downloads: 276