Urban emotion: a psychogeography case study on the Palmira and San Carlos neighbourhood in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Abstract

The relationship between the human emotion and the modern city is a scientific field that multidisciplinary academics and artists have explored during the last centuries. However, emotions are complex subjective experiences that are culturally shaped (GRUBER,2013); and still need to be strengthened and experimented in diverse cultural, technological and political standpoints to create happier, healthier and sustainable cities (GEHL,2011). This research aims to explore the psych evolutionary theory of emotion ̶proposed by Robert Plutchik (1980); as well pretends to display models of urban thinking projected by the Situationist International Movement (1950), Kevin Lynch (1960), Jan Gehl (2011) and Collin Ellard (2018) in some of the western cultured cities. Using playful, constructive and ludic techniques proposed by the Situationists, this thesis presents the building of a psychogeography case study that offers a contemporary overview of the urban qualities and the emotional responses that 109 local participants experienced in a seven-kilometre drift in the Palmira and San Carlos neighbourhood in Tegucigalpa— considered by diverse sources as “one of the most dangerous cities of the world”.