ABSTRACT
How, then, are affects part of urban life? And what implications does learning to sense and disclose affective life have for urban theory? There is no one agreedupon definition of ‘affect’ given the complexity of work across the social sciences and humanities. In the first section of the chapter, I offer a working definition of ‘affect’. As the chapter proceeds, I draw out some differences between how affect has been understood and researched in urban theory. The next section then argues for and offers a conceptualisation of the affective life of cities that centres the question of how urban affects are patterned. To this end, subsequent sections explore how specific urban affects emerge and how urban affects are unevenly distributed. The conclusion suggests some implications of learning to attune to the affective life of cities.
