Melancholy Urbanism: Distant Horizons and the Presentation of Place

Abstract

The way designers and filmmakers draw attention to the horizon provides valuable insights into urban environments. The horizon in turn carries certain emotional entailments, not least the way it relates to the mood of melancholy. Melancholy is a more interesting emotional category than happiness, or even sadness and depression. Melancholy is in the company of long-distance travel, ambivalence about feelings, self-reflection and irony. It is been described as a meta-mood, and the mood against which others might be compared. In this chapter I draw on film, art, mobile communications, digital photography and emerging social media practices to reinforce the topological connection between melancholy, film and the city.