VIRTUAL Barcelona

Abstract

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This paper introduces phenomenological heritage to discuss factors of livability as way-abilities, as the means a person has for accessing and connecting past trajectories towards shared futures. Cities are usually seen as material spaces, but they are also phenomenological spaces—spaces that, even while shared, are experienced in unique ways according to the developmental trajectory and embodied sensuality of the person encountering them. Through this lens, livability can be assessed as what a city affords each particular embodied trajectory within it; its ability to hold phenomenological heritage without discounting it, while also providing paths of introduction and observed intersection between an embodied trajectory and those sharing minimal regularities with it. This is assessed here as way-ability. In so doing, the paper expands the idea of non-material or intangible heritage to include phenomenological heritage. We can then better observe the city as a multi-dimensional living system that requires phenomenological acknowledgement and trajectorial sharing to be improved. The degree to which a city is able to provide intra and inter-connective access among these varying trajectories (its way-ability) is the degree to which it is livable. How well a city supports way-abilities and potentiates new ones—how well it opens them to one another while maintaining its inertia—will be the extent to which it flourishes and creates a more sustainable future. Instigating actions, discussions, and models that increase awareness of unique trajectories towards generating increased way-ability (increased ways to move between agent-bases) is thus key to a healthy and flourishing city.