Sensing the urban

This special issue of Ethnologia Fennica, "Sensing the Urban", began to take shape in the discussions of the research group at the University of Turku.The group, consisting of ethnologists, a museologist, and a cultural historian, together studied the designed, experienced, and perceived socio-material well-being in a newly built residential area near the medieval castle of Turku in southwestern Finland.The aim of the research was, on the one hand, to understand the everyday mobility of people living and working in this area and how they engage sensorily with its different kinds of places, materialities and temporalities, and, on the other hand, what sensory experiences could contribute to urban design and planning.So, we decided to invite other scholars to reflect on the importance of sensory urban studies in ethnology and our related disciplines.You can read the results in this special issue.The starting point for urban ethnology is that people live in complex relationships with their urban environment.They move through the city and spend their work and leisure time in diverse urban settings.They live with other humans, but also with non-humans, so that the socio-materiality of their environment affects their lives in multiple ways.The city is also a place of memories, cultural heritage and hopes for the future.To study this complexity with a sensory starting point, through ethnographic fieldwork or documents, means to look at the city through people's sensory experiences and narratives of it.There is no need to limit the research to the present, since the past and future sensing of the urban are equally important.Moreover, these experiences can vary across different bodies, genders, ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic groups.Urban environments, and consequently the lives lived in them, are often planned and designed according to prevailing discourses, ideologies and ideas, while simultaneously being formed in different temporalities.These, in turn, direct and contextualize sensory experiences, knowing of the city, and everyday urban practices.