Sonic citizenship and the feeling of awe in urban space

To intentionally design for thriving communities, it is central to better understanding how people experience spaces and how emotions are connected to different urban environments. Exposed through everyday wonders, the feeling of awe is argued to hold the key to a more fulfilling life helping us to fold into more social collectives. Exploring the city at ear-level is a critical aspect of understanding the feeling of awe, and to address the relational framework between listener and soundscape. With current methods within soundscape research coming short in grasping the complexity of emotional and socio-cultural values shaping our auditory perception, we propose sonic citizenship as an approach to adopt a more community-oriented understanding of soundscapes. Gehl has a long history of being methodologically focused on collecting soft data within urban space to understand the human collective experience and what people cherish in a place, thereby informing sustainable urban development. This therefore serves as inspiration in the exploration of how to pay attention to the auditory dimensions of the feeling of awe and the cherished places in the urban city. We further acknowledge the inherent unpredictability of affective experience and suggest intentional fuzziness as a methodological tool to navigate constructively within such conditions.