Planning for Cities of Awe

By Timothy Beatley

How many times during the course of a day or a week do you find yourself speechless, unable to express what you are seeing, so affected by and immersed in feelings of wonder and fascination that you do not notice the passage of time? Perhaps you were startled by streaks of lightning, caught a glimpse of a stunning vista, or perhaps saw an animal doing something that seemed to defy the laws of physics (e.g., a nuthatch walking up the vertical surface of a tree). These are moments of magic and delight that add pleasure and meaning to our lives.

Planners often don't think enough about what philosophers and psychologists call the feeling of awe. Awe, psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt argue, can be defined by two qualities: "perceived vastness" and "accommodation." Perceived vastness is "anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self or the self 's ordinary level of experience or frame of reference." It need not be something physically large or vast, though it often is, as in the case of a breaching whale or panoramic landscape. Accommodation happens as we attempt to make sense of what we see and shift our mental frames to integrate this new knowledge or insight about the world.

These awe-invoking experiences tend to stop us in our tracks, eliciting a mental (and even audible) "wow." They are moments of beauty and give us an understanding of how small we are. They help us overcome our hubris and humancenteredness.

They may also help us with the modern problem of harried lives. Researchers from the Stanford School of Management have shown that people exposed to an awe experience are more likely to feel a greater availability of time. This is a valuable effect, to be sure, as most of us stumble through our days feeling time-starved, always late, and perpetually behind. In this sense, moments of awe help slow us down and put us in the moment. This is likely to result in positive health benefits. Another outcome: The Stanford study also revealed greater willingness to volunteer time in support of a "worthy cause."

Feelings of awe, even fleeting ones, add immensely to the positive experience of living in cities. It is a very important dimension of urban quality of life, and whether or not a few seconds of awe on the way to work or during an evening walk is enough to change the broader arc of our lives, there is little question that the rhythm of our days is a compilation of the many moments and smaller experiences of our everyday lives.

Partly the challenge is to reimagine cities with this in mind. In our daily urban routines, we frequently miss the many potential awe-invoking experiences around us. Paying attention, looking, listening, and being open to experiencing these moments are not practices we have cultivated. And sometimes, of course, things that could stimulate feelings of awe are profoundly hidden or obscured and require some degree of work to see or uncover. Part of the job of cities is to make those potential sources more visible and present.

In the first three months of the BioSCAN project, a three-year investigation of insect biodiversity in urban environments, local citizen volunteers helped scientists at the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles discover 30 never-before-seen species of phorid flies. These tiny, fascinating creatures (about the size of a fruit fly) represent just a fraction of the insect species being collected as part of the project.

Maximizing moments of awe

One incredible source of wonder is the night sky. Paul Bogard's recent book The End of Night is a compelling indictment of the present conditions in most urban and suburban communities — places that because of rampant light pollution are characterized more by a ubiquitous "skyglow" than by any captivating view of the Milky Way. It's a daunting challenge, but reducing light pollution can — and should — be done. Paris and New York have adopted or are considering significant restrictions of nighttime lighting, including turning lights out after a certain hour.

But moderating light pollution alone is not nearly enough. Teaching kids and adults about what they see when they look up at night is another task. Urban planetariums can have a huge positive impact, as can neighborhood sky-gazing parties and telescopes set up in prominent public spaces in a city.

Sometimes experiencing the feelings of vastness offered by nature is difficult in cities because of the minuteness of the scale. Think of the many small remarkable living things that occupy the spaces in and around our homes and offices.

The recent work of Amy Savage, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, comes to mind. She has been sampling ant species in the median strips on Broadway in New York City and has discovered remarkable diversity and interesting biological insights. Residents might be fascinated to know that as they race to their next appointments there are more than 40 species of ants near or underfoot.

Engaging urbanites and suburbanites in actual research about such species is another way cities can facilitate moments of awe. For example, the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles BioSCAN initiative has cleverly enlisted home owners to host insect collection traps in their backyards, resulting in the discovery of some 30 completely new species of flies.

Cities near water have even more chances for moments of awe, with nearby marine biodiversity and forms of nature and organisms that have incredible (and incredibly different) biologies and life cycles than terrestrial organisms. Cities can get creative in enticing citizens to enjoy this rich but largely underwater world.

One idea from cities like Seattle and Singapore are low-tide walks, which invite participants to see the watery world that's typically out of view. A program called Beach Naturalists in Seattle teaches citizen volunteers to become guides for these walks at Seattle parks, answering questions about what visitors and school groups see at low tide.

An awe-filled life should be an aspiration for us all. Planners must look for ways to design and manage cities to maximize these moments.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.