Rethinking the Urban Sublime

This chapter takes a closer look at the notion of the sublime and its place in philosophical aesthetics and how it can be understood in the context of contemporary urban everyday environments. We propose that the aesthetic category of the sublime is somewhat forgotten in the urban discourse and could be more emphasized when discussing the experience of contemporary cities. Philosophical urban aesthetics would benefit from a more detailed account of the sublime as it is without a doubt a central aesthetic quality of contemporary urban environments globally. In the first section, we give a detailed account of the sublime as a philosophical concept. In the second section, we zoom into urban complexity as a particularly contemporary condition for the sublime. The third section of the chapter focuses on the example of urban darkness (or the lack of it), to show in which ways the sublime is relevant for studying the aesthetic experiences related to the contemporary urban everyday.