May 26, 2026

What does a city sound like, and what does it smell like when no one is paying attention? Beyond skylines and infrastructure, urban life is saturated with sensory encounters that quietly shape how we live together. In Sensory Contact Zones in the City (Cambridge University Press, 2026), Professor Kelvin E. Y. Low (NUS Sociology and Anthropology) turns our attention to these often-overlooked dimensions of urban experience. The book explores how everyday encounters with sound and smell, fleeting and yet powerful, structure relationships between people, animals, and the spaces they share.

At the heart of Sensory Contact Zones in the City are two key ideas: “sensory contact zones” and “sensory citizenship.” Low uses these concepts to examine how urban residents negotiate sensory boundaries: what counts as noise, what counts as stench, and who gets to decide. In dense cities where proximity is unavoidable, these judgments often reflect deeper questions about power, tolerance, and belonging.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, from colonial-era newspapers and legal ordinances to contemporary debates, the book traces how smells and sounds have long been sites of tension. Complaints about noisy neighbours, street vendors, animals, or industrial activity are not just minor irritations, but moments where social norms are contested and enforced. Low shows how such sensory conflicts often lead to legal intervention, revealing an emerging form of “sensory jurisprudence” that governs what is acceptable in shared urban life.

Across both historical and contemporary contexts, Low demonstrates that sensory experiences are not merely background noise. They actively shape how urban space is organised, how communities interact, and how rights are asserted. In doing so, he invites readers to reconsider the city not just as a visual or economic space, but as a lived, multisensory environment where everyday encounters carry social and political weight.

Read Sensory Contact Zones in the City here.