Cresswell (2009) Place

What is Place?

Place is a particular location that has acquired a set of meanings and attachments1. It lies at the center of geography’s interests and is a meaningful site

The Three Components of Place

Place combines location, locale, and sense of place

Location (Component of Place)

Location refers to an absolute point in space with specific coordinates and measurable distances from other locations1. It tells us the "where" of place1. For example, 33.3251 44.4221 marks the city of Baghdad

Locale (Component of Place)

Locale refers to the material setting for social relations – the way a place looks1. It includes buildings, streets, parks, and other visible and tangible aspects of a place

Concept: Sense of Place (Component of Place)

Sense of place refers to the more nebulous meanings associated with a place: the feelings and emotions a place evokes1. These meanings can be individual (based on personal biography) or shared (based on mediation and representation)

Place as a Combination of Materiality, Meaning, and Practice

In any given place, we encounter a combination of materiality, meaning, and practice These three elements are linked

Materiality of Place

Places have a material structure, such as skyscrapers, boulevards, or shanties4. Material structures often come to stand for the place itself (e.g., Eiffel Tower)4. Materiality also includes things passing through places like commodities, vehicles, and people

The Role of Meaning in Defining Place

The idea of meaning has been central to notions of place since the 1970s3. Location becomes place when it becomes meaningful3. Meaning marks the difference between an abstract location (like coordinates) and a place (like 'Baghdad')

Types of Meaning in Place

Meanings can be very personal and connected to individual biographies (places where we fell in love, went to school)3. Meanings are also shared and social (e.g., shared meanings of the Twin Towers)3. Shared meanings are never fixed and are open to contestation

Practice in Place

Places are practiced; people do things in place6. What people do is, in part, responsible for the meanings a place might have6. More mundane, everyday practices (going to work, shopping, hanging out) are a significant ingredient in place

The Link between Materiality, Meaning, and Practice

The material topography of place is made by people doing things according to the meanings they want a place to evoke5. Meanings gain persistence when inscribed in the material landscape but are contested by non-conforming practices5. Practices often conform to what is appropriate in a place and are limited by material affordances

The Scale of Place

Places can exist at many scales, from the corner of a room for a child to the whole earth seen from outer space

Place in Classical Greek Philosophy

The origins of a philosophy of place can be seen in Plato and Aristotle7. They developed notions like 'chora' and 'topos'

Plato's Chora and Topos

Plato developed the notions of 'chora' and 'topos'7. Chora implies extent in space and the thing becoming within it, often translated as a receptacle, different from empty space ('kenon')7.... Topos is often used interchangeably but usually refers to an achieved place

Aristotle's View of Place

To Aristotle, place was a necessary starting point to understand space, movement, and change8. He wrote that place "takes precedence over all other things"

Aristotle: "Everything Must Be Somewhere"

Aristotle argued that everything that exists must be somewhere because "what is not is nowhere"8. For him, place comes first because everything that exists has to be located

Martin Heidegger's 'Being There' (Dasein)

Heidegger struggled with the nature of 'being'9. To him, to be was to be 'somewhere', which he called 'dasein' – "being there"9. Human existence is existence "in the world"

Heidegger's Dwelling

Heidegger developed the idea of 'being-in-the-world' in his notion of dwelling9. Dwelling doesn't just mean building a house, but building a whole world to which we are attached, making the world meaningful or place-like

Heidegger's Black Forest Cabin Example

Heidegger used the image of a Black Forest farmhouse to describe building and dwelling10.... This represented a model of organic, rooted dwelling that seemed to sit naturally in the world

Humanistic Geography and Place

Place was first self-consciously written about in the 1970s with the advent of humanistic geography12. Inspired by philosophies of meaning like phenomenology, humanistic geographers insisted geographers think of people as knowing and feeling subjects

Humanistic Critique of Spatial Science

Humanistic geography emerged partly as a critique of spatial science12. Spatial science treated people as objects rather than subjects, focusing on 'location', 'spatial patterns', and 'distance', and assuming people were rational actors without accounting for meaning or experience

Yi-Fu Tuan's Contribution

Yi-Fu Tuan's book "Space and Place" (1977) is central to humanistic geography12.... He compared the richness of an experiential perspective to more scientific approaches

The Space vs. Place Distinction (Humanistic)

The most important contribution of humanistic geography is the distinction between an abstract realm of space and an experienced and felt world of place16. This became a taken-for-granted distinction by the early 1980s

How Space Becomes Place (Humanistic View)

What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value16. From the security of place, we are aware of the openness/threat of space, and vice versa16. A pause in movement allows location to be transformed into place

The Role of Experience (Humanistic View)

Experience is at the heart of what place means6.... The focus on experience was revolutionary13. Experience transforms a scientific notion of space into a lived and meaningful notion of place18. A known reality is a construct of experience, a creation of feeling and thought

The Social Construction of Place

Geographers inspired by Marxism, feminism, and post-structuralism began, in the 1980s, to develop a critical approach which sought to understand how power is implicated in the construction, reproduction, and contestation of places19. They argued that places are anything but natural

Critique of the Humanistic "Universal" Subject

Critical geographers noted that the "humans" in humanism tended to be either determinedly individual or instances of a 'universal' humanist subject19. This approach didn't adequately address social power dynamics.

Critical Critique of Heidegger's Rooted Place

Critical geographers saw the organic, rooted, and bounded place evoked by Heidegger's dwelling as limiting and exclusionary

David Harvey on Place as a Social Construct

David Harvey argued that the first step in understanding place is to insist that place is, like space and time, a social construct20. The interesting question is by what social processes place is constructed

Different Views of Home (Humanistic vs. Critical)

The concept of home illustrates tensions between humanistic and critical views21. Humanists see home as an ideal place of intense meaning, attachment, safety, and care21. Critical geographers see home frequently as a site of patriarchal authority, abuse, or exclusion

Critical View: Home as a Site of Asymmetrical Power and Exclusion

To critical geographers, home is a place associated with violence or order that excludes those who don't fit, such as children or those labeled "out of place" in a neighborhood22.... This reinforces systematically asymmetrical power relations

Normative Places and Exclusion

Mapping particular meanings, practices, and identities onto place leads to the construction of normative places24. These places have often invisible boundaries defining what is appropriate

Being "In Place" vs. "Out of Place"

Normative places create categories of people, things, and practices that are either "in place" (appropriate) or "out of place" (transgressive)24.... The common-sense nature of these norms makes them powerful

Contestation and Resistance to Normative Places

Social constructions of place are constantly contested, transgressed, and resisted by the excluded26. Examples include young people on street corners, the homeless living in inhospitable places, or artists altering monuments26. Places are never truly finished and always open to transformation

Placelessness (Edward Relph)

In "Place and Placelessness" (1976), Edward Relph argued that places were becoming placeless due to mass production, mobility, and fake, "inauthentic" places like Disneyworld

Nonplace (Marc Auge)

More recently, anthropologist Marc Auge used the term 'nonplace' to refer to sites of transit like motorway service stations, airports, and shopping malls which are marked by a lack of attachment and continuous circulation

Characteristics of Nonplaces

Nonplaces are marked by a lack of attachment, constant circulation, communication, and consumption28. They feature texts, screens, and signs that facilitate mediated rather than direct relationships28. Auge suggests they are a condition of supermodernity characterized by speed, time-space compression, and individualism

Place, Process, and Mobility

Traditionally, place has been a static concept30. However, thinkers have explored how place is in process and how process makes place30. The relationship between place and mobilities is a key issue

David Seamon: Place from Habitual Mobilities

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, David Seamon described place as a product of everyday habitual mobilities30.... He used terms like 'body-ballet' (habitual body movements), 'time–space routine' (stringing these together over a day), and 'place-ballet' (collective, unchoreographed yet ordered patterns of practice in a place)

Doreen Massey: A Progressive Sense of Place

Doreen Massey argued that places are actively constituted by mobility (people, commodities, ideas)33. Her "progressive sense of place" sees places as routes rather than roots, sites of heterogeneous rather than homogeneous identities, produced through connections to the wider world33. This view contrasts with seeing mobility as a threat to place