Abstract

AbstractThis article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, health, social status and more. This suggests settings areselectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods.

Highlights

  • Everyday life is valuative, that is, organized around emotions, interests and aesthetics.[1]

  • Merging Gibson’s position and value-sensitive design with defensible space theory, which stresses latent boundaries that corral human movements in urban space, we develop a concept of political affordances – understood as openings or closures for political action

  • The point is that human artifacts – including architecture and urban design – are not ethically and politically neutral

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Summary

Introduction

That is, organized around emotions, interests and aesthetics.[1]. We expand the value-sensitive design approach: a framework that holds that human artifacts embody political and ethical values, accounting for this throughout the design process.[5] for example, marble in financial institutions signifies trustworthiness, reliability and security,[6] along with prestige and wealth These values have social implications, organizing human movements by inviting certain people in to do business and perhaps warding off those of modest means. Authoritarian governments redesign urban settings to psychologically repel citizens and seize control of ideologies represented in politically charged spaces These practices, are only variations of today’s market-oriented design aimed at controlling human movement for business purposes and signaling an all-too-tight identification of commercial interests with visions of the moral and political good

Architectural values
Political affordances and normative space
Selective permeability
Findings
Conclusion
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