ABSTRACT
The design and shaping of built environments for human settlement has through the whole history of humanity been embedded in religious worldviews and practices. The concept of "lived religion" is inspired by phenomenology, and it emerged in German practical theology in the 1990s. It can be connected to Edward Soja's concept of lived space in a fruitful way. If lived space represents the "real-and-imagined, actual-and-virtual, locus of structured individual and collective experience and agency," lived religion would represent both the practical and imagined experience and encounter with the sacred. The chapter explores three different themes—aesth/ethics, ritual, and memory— and discusses different theoretical tools for an analysis. The lens of looking at social life as rites, rituals, and ritualizations offers exciting possibilities to combine the analysis of actions and ideas. Approaching urban space through the lens of rituals could make aware of another perspective.
