Climbing the city. Inhabiting verticality outside of comfort bubbles

Climbing Dumbarton Rock: an exploration of climbers’ experiences on sport and heritage from the perspective of existential authenticity

“…One climber even used one word "bubble" to give a picture of what she saw and felt when climbing there. This is not what Brighenti and Pavoni (2018) claimed that urban climbing is a way of jumping outside the comfort bubbles. In contrast, the "bubble" here, means setting apart the self and others, to some extent which is like the above "boundary effect" of the beach.…”

Comfort in chaos: A sensory account of climate change denial

“…This reframes mechanisms of class and wealth as means of keeping the bodily spectrum of response – and any physical or emotional discomfort – at bay. And yet Brighenti and Pavoni (2018: 143) point out that achieving bodily comfort and “existential assurance” through these spaces bring with it the stressful possibility that they will be taken away and reality finally confronted.…”

“…The concept of the bubble is a useful one in that it captures the invisibility of the privilege required to maintain a desired atmosphere, and emphasises that just as the outside is excluded, so too is the individual contained and isolated within. Brighenti and Pavoni (2018: 75) consider the dualism of the air-conditioned building wall, one side of which is considered uninhabitable and inaccessible while the other offers “confine[ment] inside the protected, encapsulated bubble of systematic consumption and delegation”. Considering the implications of the literal and affective insulation afforded by private comfort bubbles in the form of air-conditioned homes, workplaces, and cars, this delegation may refer to the task of technology in maintaining comfort, or to the bodies of unseen others who will bear the cost of that comfort.…”

Multi-sensory ethnography and vertical urban transformation: ascending the Peckham Skyline

“…Indeed, this call has been taken up to provide insights into the everyday geographies of home among those who live in high-rise residential developments (Nethercote & Horne, 2016;Baxter, 2017) and the experience of communal spaces at height in Hadi, Heath & Oldfield's (2018) ethnography of sky gardens in Singapore. The embodiment and inhabitation of being at height also emerge as themes within such literature, including the 'Vicarious Vertigo' of those involved in co-producing high-up spaces (Butt, 2018), the bodily practice of urban climbers (Brighenti & Pavoni, 2017), and the experience of walking on glass viewing platforms at height (Deriu, 2018). We build on this ethnographic turn to consider what multisensory ethnography might offer not only to our understandings of how the city at height is experienced, but also how social and spatial inequalities are (re)produced through three-dimensional geographies.…”