An insight into the urban smellscape: the transformation of traditional to contemporary urban place experience

Abstract

Sensescape, predominantly explored from the viewpoint of viewscape and soundscape, needs investigation from other senses such as smell, a vital part of place experience. The place experience not only depends on senses but also on how senses act within the context. Cities across developing countries, with dynamic tension of coexistence between traditional and modern, are experiencing transformations, inducing major alterations in urban land-use systems and have started to impact upon urban place experience and urban smellscapes diversities. Smellscape is a complex phenomenon posing challenges to the reductionist approach for better insight, hence requiring an effective conceptual framework for analyzing the smellscape with reference to the transformations in cities. Four urban node precinct typologies, as representative cases from developing countries, namely, traditional, partially transformed, transformed and majorly transformed urban nodes, are assessed and presented in this paper. The smellscape and urban place experience, their interconnectedness, and interdependency are investigated in this paper. Based on interpretive epistemology from the cognition framework, the paper posits that the smellscape has a vital role in urban place experience, it correlates and influences urban place liking, and provides clues for theory building for the assessment of smellscape, an underexplored intangible aspect of sensory place experience.