Nosy Researcher’s Quest to Map the World’s ‘Smellscapes’

Christmas may be associated with the aromas of oranges and mince pies but our towns and cities also boast special scents during the rest of the year. Now, one researcher is publishing an atlas attempting to capture these quirky “smellscapes”.

Dr Kate McLean-MacKenzie, a designer and researcher at the University of Kent, said she first became intrigued by the sense of smell 15 years ago.

“I realised that there was an enormous gap in the fact that we communicate what we see – and we can record that and we can share it via Instagram and photography and sketching – and we can record and share sounds digitally. But any way of recording and communicating smell was largely missing,” she said.

As a result, McLean-MacKenzie began mapping “smellscapes” in different locations, including many of the world’s cities.

This involves asking participants to take “smell walks” on the street – recording not only what they can smell but its intensity and duration, whether it is unexpected, whether they like it or not, and any associations the scent conjures up.

“I analyse that data and from it create visual maps and then a sort of cultural narrative about what smell tells you about those cities in response to what came out from the smell walks,” McLean-MacKenzie said. “So it’s all human interpretation, it’s largely subjective, and it’s about the stories that smells lead us to in cities.”