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Advances in biosensing technologies have led to the commercialization of novel lightweight wearable devices, which have been praised by urban scholars for offering the possibility to quantify emotions in real-world settings, something that had proven to be very challenging until now. Although many studies mix biosensing with qualitative methods to provide a clearer picture of what physiological data might mean in terms of emotions, there has been little exploration of how people interpret their own biodata. Following calls for greater attention to participation in biosensing studies, this article explores the nuances of the interpretation of biodata by research participants. Drawing on the findings of a study in which participants were invited to reflect on and discuss their own biodata during and after a walk in a high street in Lisbon, we show how exposing participants to biodata creates moments of bounded interference that foster in-depth reflection about the urban experience. With this in mind, we discuss how bounded interference can be a generative driver for more detailed discussions about spatial experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last chance tourism, which can be described as the practice of tourism in environmentally damaged or threatened spaces, is an emerging trend that has been considered problematic due to the pressure that it places on already fragile environments. This article explores the possibilities of turning last chance tourism experiences into hopeful tourism experiences, by creating emotionally driven last chance tourism experiences in controlled and safe environments through digital storytelling. We draw on literature on transformative, hopeful and flourishing tourism to argue that last chance experiences provide unique opportunities for eliciting reflection among tourists and promote a greater environmental awareness if they are driven by emotionally engaging narratives. Our study explores the outcomes of an experiment conducted at the Ajuda Botanical Garden (Lisbon, Portugal) with a futuristic mixed-reality game that places users as members of a scientific expedition looking for plants that have become extinct in the twenty-second century. The results of this study show how the game's last chance narrative generated contradictory, mixed feelings among the participants, which ultimately led to hopeful existential reflection about nature conservation action. With this in mind, we reflect on the potential of transformative last chance tourism experiences guided by digital narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a geoethnographic study of street football games in Lisbon's Metropolitan Area. The study explores how soundmaking is used by young people to generate micro-worlds and territories in street football games in urban space. The insights of the study contribute toward the field of sonic geographies by demonstrating that directing our focus away from the act of listening can provide novel insights into the role that sound plays in making space and connecting subjects. We present four related arguments to sustain this claim. First, we argue that human soundmaking must be understood as a whole, including the making of lexical and non-lexical, representational and non-representational sounds. Secondly, we argue that human soundmaking is closely related to listening, even if this relationship surpasses consciousness, but it is by no means a mere consequence of listening. Third, we show that human soundmaking is interwoven with everyday acts of worldmaking. Lastly, we posit that by taking part in everyday worldmaking, soundmaking also plays a significant role in the production of everyday urban territories. With this in mind, we point future directions for the field of sonic geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the enactment of conflicting time regimes in contemporary urban retail and consumer services. We draw on the theories of time–space compression, social acceleration, and the fast–slow dichotomy to argue that retail and consumer services act on urban life by enacting two apparently conflicting time regimes: fast time and slow time. Although retail and consumer services are not able to establish urban time regimes by themselves, they enact time regimes in their stores by offering the temporal resources that consumers need to perform their preferred timestyles. These temporal resources stem from the store's concepts, sales model and management strategies, and ambiances. We draw on our ongoing field research in Colinas do Cruzeiro, an upper middle-class suburban neighborhood in greater Lisbon, Portugal, which has included field surveys, nonparticipant observation, and semistructured interviews. Our findings identify three time regimes that retail and consumer services in Colinas do Cruzeiro enact in their stores. This finding allows us to understand the processes through which retail, consumer services, and urban rhythms tend to synchronize. We discuss the geographical implications of understanding the processes that underpin the enactment of time regimes in contemporary urban retail and consumer services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to understand the phenomenology of moments of transition between sonic environments in the urban context and conceptualize the role they play in the attunement of the body to urban spaces. It has been argued that transitions between different environments tend to be moments when sonic perception and feedback are enhanced and, as moments of interruption, they play a significant role in how we attune to urban places. Our study contributes to a greater understanding of these moments. We present the concept of sonic first impression to address the affective nuances of these moments, and the concept of sonic attunement to address how individuals tune in to urban places through sound. In order to explore how these concepts apply in practice, we have undertaken a participatory methodology with 12 volunteers, which included sound diaries and go-alongs. These methods allowed us to gather in-depth data about spatial and temporal transitions and issues related to the angle of arrival of the body. Our results unveil the role that sound plays in attunement to place, a role that encompasses both meaning and affect, active and passive hearing, consciousness and unconsciousness, mind and body, psychology and physiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a moment when new retail formats are emerging and consumers are changing their preferences, it is vital to reflect on the existing shopping malls, which are being challenged in European cities. With their vitality endangered, many become dead malls, a phenomenon that has increased over recent years. With this in mind, the objective of this study is to explain the factors behind the proliferation of dead malls through an empirical analysis of the evolution of shopping malls in Greater Lisbon, Portugal. We combine three sets of retail change theories (cyclic, conflict and environmental) with current perspectives on the resilience of urban retail. We expect that our study will contribute toward current debates on the resilience of shopping malls. The methodology of our study comprises two stages. First, we updated the Greater Lisbon shopping mall database and analysed the growth and decline of each shopping mall type over the last 44 years. In a second phase, we conducted a fieldwork survey on 150 shopping malls, which allowed us to identify and profile the dead malls of Greater Lisbon. Our results show that dead malls match declining shopping mall types, and we discuss four factors affecting the resilience of shopping malls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual spaces have emerged as everyday life spaces in contemporary societies. Very quickly, they have gained a cultural role in the daily life of their users, as these new territories gain their own communities, ideologies, and spatializations. However, little is known about how place is experienced in these different realms. This study seeks to understand place experience in virtual spaces, taking the sim racing virtual spaces as a case study and endeavoring to build a bridge between theory and empirics. This study uses ethnographic methods, which included a year-long participant observation period and a set of 20 in-depth interviews with users, in order to understand their narratives of the virtual geographies of two sim racing videogames: Gran Turismo and rFactor. The results of the study show that spirit of place, place ballets, and sense of place exist just as well among users of virtual spaces—despite the particularities of these new territories and their remaining tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]