Driving through Nowhere-land

Expert Rationality, Everyday Emotions and the Crux of Modern Spatial Production

Abstract

In the past decades the academic mainstream has drifted away from a critical approach and has began to accept spatial modernization. Emotional resistance against the rapid transformation of landscapes tends to be judged as anti-pluralistic. But outside the academic circles, modern spatial structures such as industrial parks do evoke negative feelings. That doesn’t necessarily mean active resistance: In everyday life people wish to reduce unpleasant or painful emotions and therefore voluntarily practice ‘highway narcosis’ (Lynch) by simply looking away when hideous surroundings come in sight. There is also a great amount of pragmatic rationality when coping with environment, and feelings rarely have the power to overcome economic or practical reasoning. Lost battles of this kind increase the feelings of multiple crisis of our time. We lack the ability to make connections between mind and emotion, between economy and ecology, freedom and coherence, individual self-interest and common goods. Spatial figurations can serve as a visualization of the core problems of (post-)modern pluralism. A new kind of balance is required, and only the conscious participation in building new connections could achieve that trade-off.