Opening the city: Reorienting the built environment towards exposure, vulnerability and presence

Taylor Hood

The Ecological Citizen Vol 9 No 2 2026: 152–60 [epub-164]

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First published: 22 June 2026 | PERMANENT URL | DOWNLOAD CITATION IN RIS FORMAT

Abstract

This article examines how the contemporary built environment diminishes the possibility of presence by minimizing exposure and vulnerability. By drawing on the work of Byung-Chul Han and Patrick Curry, the paper provides an interpretative account of how cities are constructed to enclose the human figure in a world that is increasingly separate from the more-than-human realm, and then clarifies how urban change itself is to be understood once enclosure is recognized as an imperative of the built environment. It argues that many well-intentioned efforts to improve cities ecologically can produce real alterations while leaving intact the deeper organization through which everyday experience is structured. Rather than proposing policy measures or design solutions, the paper offers a way of reading urban change that attends to the distinction between effects that human-centred cities can absorb and conditions that would have to endure as an ordinary part of their texture.

Keywords

Ecological living, Environmental humanities, Societal change, Values, Visions

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