VIRTUAL Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

While contemporary discourses on city and space are largely informed by sociological approaches, development plans, and formal methods, they can be said to lack a holistic conceptual framework for understanding the multi-layered, experiential, and contradictory nature of urban life and culture. This study aims to rethink spatial theory by reading Mikhail Bakhtin’s core concepts such as addressivity, dialogism, chronotope, polyphony, and answerability in relation to his lesser-known concepts like architectonics, outsideness, eventness, threshold, etc., thereby opening up a discussion on the possibility of a ‘dialogic urban dictionary’. Bakhtin’s philosophy of language argues that every utterance is directed towards an addressee, is shaped by social relations, and has the potential to generate a response (Bakhtin, 1981). Based on this approach, it can be suggested that cities should be considered not merely as physical spaces, but as living systems where dialogue, narrative, and interpretation are intertwined. This study critically relates Bakhtin’s theoretical perspective to Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) social production of space, Paul Ricoeur’s (1984) power of narrative to reconstruct time, and Gernot Böhme’s (2017) approach to atmosphere. In this theoretical framework, Bakhtin’s concepts are examined through urban narratives, spatial experience, and emotional-social dimensions. Cities can thus be approached through relational, polyphonic narratives rather than just formal analyses. These concepts reveal the temporal, spatial, and sensory aspects of urban experiences. In conclusion, this study aims to communicate with the city through concepts, defining the city as a system that is encountered, remembered, and negotiated. A comparative reading of Bakhtin’s concepts offers a critical perspective that allows for thinking together the linguistic and social layers of urban livability. It fills the conceptual gap in urban studies through Bakhtin’s concepts.