Olfactory Urbanism

By Apeksha Narayan

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Cities are usually described in images. Skylines. Traffic. Glass buildings reflecting sunsets. We argue about what Bengaluru looks like, whether it has lost its trees, whether the lakes are clean, whether the metro line ruins the view.

But what does Bengaluru smell like?

It’s a strange question. We are not trained to ask it. Smell feels too intimate, too subjective, almost impolite. Yet if you move through the city with your nose alert, you begin to realise that smell is one of its sharpest truths.

Stand near a clogged stormwater drain after heavy rain. The water rises, mixes, spills. The air thickens. What you inhale is not just “bad odour”, it is a story about sewage lines that were never upgraded, about lakes that double as holding tanks, about infrastructure stretched beyond capacity. The smell is not incidental. It is systemic issue.

In Kengeri, the infamous “mori”, the open sewage channel that residents know all too well — announces itself before it appears. You don’t need directions to figure out if you have reached Kengeri. The air shifts. The scent carries. It is almost territorial. This is not the kind of landmark that makes it into brochures or smart-city presentations. But it is as real as any tech park.

Smell, in this sense, is an urban archive.

There was a time when rain had a predictable fragrance of wet mud, damp leaves, the metallic hint of the first drops hitting hot ground. That smell is still possible, but it is no longer guaranteed. In several neighbourhoods, rain now releases something else: trapped waste from blocked drains, sewage pushed upward, garbage stewing in low-lying corners. The monsoon becomes a season of exposure. The shift from petrichor to sewage is not just environmental decline. It is sensory evidence of planning choices.

What is striking is how quickly we adjust. “It always smells like this here,” someone will say casually at a bus stop near a garbage black spot. “You get used to it.” Adaptation becomes the coping mechanism. The body learns to dull its own discomfort. But adaptation is not neutrality, rather resignation.

Smell maps inequality in ways that are hard to ignore once noticed. Waste collection points are rarely placed near luxury villas. Open drains do not run through the lobbies of high-end apartments. Instead, odour pools in specific zones, often working-class areas, informal settlements, edges of highways, places already marked by infrastructural neglect. To live with persistent stench is to live with a constant reminder of exclusion.

And then there is the opposite experience. Enter a mall in Church Street or Koramangala, the doors slide open. Cool, conditioned air meets you. Sometimes there is even a faint signature fragrance - clean, citrusy, carefully neutral. Many commercial spaces today use ambient scent systems. Air is filtered, deodorised, curated. Nothing lingers unless it is meant to. Here, smell is managed.

This contrast matters. The same city that cannot contain sewage odour in one neighbourhood can produce perfectly sanitised air in another. Deodorisation becomes a technology of separation. Inside is controlled, outside is tolerated.

We talk about air quality using numbers, AQI levels, pollution indices. But smell is more immediate. It bypasses data and goes straight to the body. You don’t debate it; you react to it. It can embarrass, nauseate, irritate. It can also comfort. It shapes how long you want to remain in a place.

And yet, urban policy rarely treats smell as a serious metric. Master plans don’t include odour maps. Public hearings seldom revolve around the right to breathable, neutral air. Smell slips through governance because it is difficult to photograph and harder to quantify. That invisibility is precisely what makes it political and a matter of urgency.

When certain populations are expected to live with constant sewage or garbage odour, it signals what kind of environments are considered acceptable for them. When other populations can purchase deodorised interiors and insulated atmospheres, it signals that clean odourless air has quietly become a class privilege. Smell is not just sensory. It is very much spatial. It clings to specific geographies.

If we began to trace Bengaluru through scent rather than sight, the map would look different. Tech parks might fade into the background, while landfill peripheries and drainage corridors would glow intensely. The glamorous narratives of growth would have to coexist with the less marketable realities of waste.

Perhaps that is why smell remains undiscussed. It resists branding. It refuses to be beautified. It exposes what the city would rather ventilate away. To ask what Bengaluru smells like is to ask who the city is comfortable inconveniencing. It is to notice that some atmospheres are protected, while others are endured. Once you begin to pay attention, the city becomes harder to romanticise. And harder to excuse.