The contemporary city is undergoing numerous changes which are redefining its appearance and accompanying the emergence of new frameworks of sensitivity. The magnitude of such transformations is such that the term “city” is becoming more and more obsolete and it is now more appropriate to talk about “urban” instead. Such profound changes to urban life call for new theoretical perspectives and new intelligibility models to describe them. Among these, we can list an increasing interest in the sensory environment of inhabited spaces. Recent publications bear witness to this and increasingly focus on perception, landscape, sensations, the body, ambiances and other terms directly related to the ordinary experiences of city dwellers. Although it is surely an exaggeration and premature to speak of a sensory turning point in contemporary research, we can nonetheless identify the increasing presence of such topics in the social sciences. Put another way, aesthetic issues are no longer seen as secondary or ancillary; they are well on the way to becoming a key element in current urban thought.