| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5048404 | City, Culture and Society | 2012 | 9 Pages |
What do we see and what do we notice in the city? This question may arise when we suddenly notice something in the city we live in, something that surprises us although we have always known it is there. We then tell ourselves that this is only normal, that one cannot notice everything in an urban environment full of so many different things. But when we ask this question as researchers, not just as residents of the city, we cannot be satisfied with such an answer no matter how reasonable it may be in each particular case.If there are places and/or things in a city that consistently go unnoticed, we should try to understand why that is so. The two cases of not noticing I am interested in here are typologically different: one is a place, part of the city, a neighbourhood in Sofia; the other is a thing, a half-built, crumbling building in the very centre of the city of Shumen. Hence, the reasons why they go unnoticed are different as well: in the first case, the reason is the routine and continuing segregation of the Roma as strangers whose existence may be only 'there', outside 'ours'; in the second case, the reason is the conception of public space as nobody's space and, hence, unproblematic routinisation of the ugly things in it.
⺠The knowledge of the city is different because it is functionally determined. ⺠The city resident does not know the city but only there movement within its space. ⺠The city resident rarely notices the places passing through and the things in them. ⺠The boundary of 'Roma neighbourhood' exists even it is not marked on the map. ⺠The crumbling buildings, hideous relics of the past, are hardly noticed by anyone.
