Fear and Awe in the Vertical City: the Affective Space of "Going High"

Vertical cities are the hallmark of modern urbanization, and since their origin have represented the global places of progress, power and affluency. As skyscrapers and towers soar around the world, in an ever-increasing quest for height, the space of cities changes, affording its inhabitants with new, powerful affects. Yet not all emotions produced by the verticality of buildings are positive: together with the awe and wonder of the challenge to the sky, fear and anxiety also make their way into the urban subjects’ embodied experiences. In this paper, I enucleate some of the spatial dynamics of verticality, and discuss the pros and cons of this model of urbanization, together with some of its further implications, such as the repercussions on density and sustainability.