‘Empathy’ describes a relationship where you feel with someone or something. Empathy emerges as one kind of meaningful encounter: a resonance and an opening between entities, which expresses and enables deepened connections between them, or even with oneself.

But this feeling with is not limited to persons or creatures or objects. A resonant encounter may also be with a place itself. The place in which you encounter others has much to do with enabling or disabling the empathy you might experience with them. How we are able to communicate with each other, to feel comfortable or understood, or be open to learning and connecting, is determined in part by the space in which encounters occur. The idea of spatial empathy can guide us in asking how relationships between people who occupy the same places and move through the same spaces, can yet remain so separate.

Listen to an introduction on how our project defines spatial empathy as a concept and how we use it.

We engage with ‘spatial empathy’ to investigate how individuals come to understand, recognize, and emotionally connect with the lived experiences and perspectives of others within distinct spatial contexts. The concept encompasses an appreciation for the diverse ways in which space and place influence human interactions, behaviors, and identities. As a conceptual framework, spatial empathy helps us to analyze how geographical factors, such as location and socio-cultural environment, shape social phenomena and the formation of socio-spatial inequalities.

Spatial empathy highlights the intricate interplay between spatial features and human relationality. It is informed by the principles of intersectionality, and hopes to enrich empathetic engagement with diverse lived experiences and enhance the depth of interpersonal understanding.