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The term sense of place has been used in many different ways. It is a multidimensional, complex construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings. It is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some do not, while to others it is a feeling or perception held by people (not by the place itself). It is often used in relation to those characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging. Others, such as geographer
Yi-Fu Tuan Yi-Fu Tuan (; December 5, 1930 – August 10, 2022) was a Chinese-born American geographer. He was one of the key figures in human geography and arguably the most important originator of humanistic geography. Early life and education Born in ...
, have pointed to senses of place that are not "positive," such as fear. Some students and educators engage in "
place-based education Place-based education, sometimes called pedagogy of place, place-based learning, experiential education, community-based education, education for sustainability, environmental education or more rarely, service learning, is an educational philosoph ...
" in order to improve their "sense(s) of place," as well as to use various aspects of place as educational tools in general. The term is used in urban and rural studies in relation to place-making and place-attachment of communities to their environment or homeland. The term sense of place is used to describe how someone perceives and experiences a place or environment. Anthropologists
Steven Feld Steven Feld (born August 20, 1949) is an American ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli ( Bosavi) people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991. Early life Feld was bor ...
and Keith Basso define sense of place as: 'the experiential and expressive ways places are known, imagined, yearned for, held, remembered, voiced, lived, contested and struggled over ����. Many indigenous cultures are losing their sense of place because of climate change and "ancestral homeland, land rights and retention of sacred places".


Geographic place

Cultural geographers,
anthropologists An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
,
sociologists This is a list of sociologists. It is intended to cover those who have made substantive contributions to social theory and research, including any sociological subfield. Scientists in other fields and philosophers are not included, unless at least ...
and urban planners study why certain places hold special meaning to particular people or animals. Places said to have a strong "sense of place" have a strong identity that is deeply felt by inhabitants and visitors. Sense of place is a social
phenomenon A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfrie ...
. Codes aimed at protecting, preserving and enhancing places felt to be of value include "
World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
" designations, the British "
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of rural area, countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for protected area, conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are desig ...
" controls and the American "
National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...
" designation.


Placelessness

Places that lack a "sense of place" are sometimes referred to as "placeless" or "inauthentic". Edward Relph, a cultural geographer, investigates the "placelessness" of these locations. Anthropologist Marc Augé calls these locations " non-places". Stepping against the kind of reductive thinking that placelessness can lead to, in his book, '' The Practice of Everyday Life'', Jesuit philosopher
Michel de Certeau Michel de Certeau (; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was know ...
uses the term "space" () to refer to these placeless locations as opposed to "place" (). For de Certeau, "space is merely composed of intersections of mobile elements" that are not in stasis. Place, on the other hand, is space that has been ordered in some way to serve some human need. A park, for instance, is a place that has been constructed "in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence" and therefore "implies an indication of stability". de Certeau's ideas became instrumental in understanding the intersections of power and social relations in the construction of place. For de Certeau, placelessness, or "space" was a site for freedom or at least it is the site for what Timotheus Vermeulen sees as "potentially anarchic movement" Placeless landscapes are seen as those that have no special relationship to the places in which they are located—they could be anywhere; roadside strip
shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to ref ...
s, gas/petrol stations and
convenience store A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, ice creams, tobacco products, lottery tic ...
s,
fast food Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...
chains, and chain
department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...
s have been cited as examples of placeless landscape elements. Some historic sites or districts that have been heavily commercialized for
tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...
and new housing estates are defined as having lost their sense of place.
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 â€“ July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Pari ...
's "there is no there there" has been used as a description of such places.


Development of sense of place

Human geographers, social psychologists and sociologists have studied how a sense of place develops. Their approaches include comparisons between places, learning from elders and observing natural disasters and other events. Environmental psychologists have emphasized the importance of childhood experiences and have quantified links between exposure to natural environments in childhood and environmental preferences later in life. Learning about surrounding environments during childhood is strongly influenced by the direct experience of playing, as well as through the role of family, culture, and community. The special bond which develops between children and their childhood environments has been called a "primal landscape" by human geographers. This childhood landscape forms part of an individual's identity and constitutes a key point of comparison for considering subsequent places later in life. As people move around as adults, they tend to consider new places in relation to this baseline landscape experienced during childhood. In an unfamiliar environment, a sense of place develops over time and through routine practices, a process that can be undermined by disruptions in routines or abrupt changes in the environment. In the context of climate change, sense of place and then the awareness of the changes and disaster related destruction of place is leading to emotional experiences of grief and solastalgia. Research states that these emotional experiences that arise are inherently adaptive and recommends collective processing and reflecting on these in order to increase resilience and a sense of belonging. In post-disaster situations, some programs aim to re-establish a sense of place through a participatory approach.


Music and place

Ethnomusicologists, among other social scientists (like anthropologists, sociologists, and urban geographers), have begun to point toward music’s role in defining people’s “sense of place.” British ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes suggests that humans can construct an idea of “place” through music that signals their position in the world in terms of social boundaries and moral and political hierarchies. Stokes argues that music does not simply serve as a reflection of existing social structures, but yields the potential to actively transform a given space. Music denoting place can “preform” a knowledge of social boundaries and hierarchies that people use to negotiate and understand the identities of themselves and others and their relation to place. Examples of music’s role in defining a sense of place include ethnomusicologist George Lipsitz’s research on the performance of Mexican-American cultural identity in Los Angeles. In response to mechanical reproduction and increasingly commodified forms of culture, Walter Benjamin once argued that cultural objects have become increasingly removed from their original context and place of creation. In this context, ethnomusicologist George Lipsitz suggests that a consciousness of invisibility and alienation marks the cultural identity of minority groups excluded from political power and cultural recognition. Lipsitz analyzes the postmodern, cultural strategies (like bifocality, juxtaposition of multiple realities, intertextuality, inter-referentiality, and families of resemblance), Chicano rock-and-roll musicians during the late-1980s in Los Angeles used to define a sense of place within popular culture. By attending to the cultural work of Mexican-American rock-and-roll musicians, Lipsitz identifies how their music actively demonstrates a “conscious cultural politics that seeks inclusion in the American mainstream by transforming it.”Lipsitz. “Cruising around the Historical Bloc:" 177.


See also

*
Affordance Affordance is what the environment offers the individual. American psychologist James J. Gibson coined the term in his 1966 book, ''The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems'', and it occurs in many of his earlier essays. However, his best-kno ...
*
Genius loci In classical Roman religion, a ''genius loci'' (plural ''genii locorum'') was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera ( libation bowl) or snak ...
*
Spirit of place Spirit of place (or soul) refers to the unique, distinctive and cherished aspects of a place; often those celebrated by artists and writers, but also those cherished in folk tales, festivals and celebrations. It is thus as much in the invisible w ...
*
Cultural landscape Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment. As defined by the World Heritage Committee, it is the "cultural properties hatrepresent th ...
* Non-place * Activity space *
Place identity Place identity or place-based identity refers to a cluster of ideas about place and identity in the fields of geography, urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture, environmental psychology, ecocriticism and urban sociology/ecological s ...
*
Place attachment Place attachment is the emotional bond between person and place, and is a main concept in environmental psychology. It is highly influenced by an individual and his or her personal experiences. There is a considerable amount of research dedicated ...
* Topophilia *
Yi-Fu Tuan Yi-Fu Tuan (; December 5, 1930 – August 10, 2022) was a Chinese-born American geographer. He was one of the key figures in human geography and arguably the most important originator of humanistic geography. Early life and education Born in ...
*
Ian Nairn Ian Douglas Nairn (24 August 1930 – 14 August 1983) was a British architectural critic who coined the word "Subtopia" to indicate drab suburbs that look identical through unimaginative town-planning. He published two strongly personalised criti ...
* Marc Augé *
Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' ...


References


Further reading

*Chigbu, U.E. (2013). Fostering rural sense of place: the missing piece in Uturu, Nigeria. Development In Practice, 23 (2): pp. 264–277. View and download article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2013.772120 * Alexander, Christopher. '' A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction'', Oxford University Press, 1977. *Casey, Edward S. ''The Fate of Place'', University of California Press, 1998. * Cresswell, T. (2005) ''Place: a short introduction'', Blackwell Publishing. * Cresswell, T. (2009). Place. In Thrift, N., Kitchen, R., (eds) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookvolume.cws_home/722034/vol1) pages 384-395. * Gussow, Alan. 1972. ''A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Land''. San Francisco: Friends of the Earth. *Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchen, and Gil Valentine, eds. 2004. ''Key Thinkers on Space and Place''. London: Sage. *Inge, John ''A Christian Theology of Place'', Ashgate, 2003. * Kunstler, James. ''Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape'', Free Press, 1994. * Lippard, Lucy. ''The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society'', New Press, 1998. *Long, Joshua. 2010. '' Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas''. University of Texas Press. *Massey, Doreen B. 2005. ''For Space''. London: Sage. *Relph, E. C. ''Place and Placelessness'', Pion, 1976. *Snyder, Gary. 1996. ''A Place in Space''. Counterpoint. *Soja, Edward W. 1996. ''Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places''. Wiley-Blackwell. * Tuan, Yi Fu. 1977. ''Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. * Tuan, Yi Fu. 1990. '' Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values''. New York: Columbia University Press.


External links


A Definition of "Sense of Place"Research on Place and Space
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sense Of Place Cultural geography Geography terminology Psychogeography Landscape architecture Environmental social science concepts