By karenmmartin on time
This book was written by Yi-Fu Tuan in 1977 and is the most relevent book i have read yet on how – and why – we create and maintain a sense of place.
Tuan’s definition of ‘place’ is complex, especially in comparison to the definitions often given for context-aware or ubiquitous computing projects. The subtitle of the book is ‘The perspective of experience’ and this human-centred perspective is at the heart of the definition. Tuan describes the range of possible modes of experience and how, on a continuum mapping ways of knowing, experience is at one end and analytical, reflective thought is at the other. The relationship between these ways of knowing and their form as either concrete or abstract thought recurs throughout the book. He suggests that while it is possible for a place to be known simply through direct experience, or only through abstract knowledge, it is only truly understood when it is known in both of these ways. This is very similar to ideas of Constructionism.
For Tuan, movement is key to an understanding of place as it suggests exploration and freedom. Because places are partly defined through relationships (difference and sameness to other places) movement is implicit in our creation of meaning for places. The concept of strangeness implies both time and movement. The potential for movement is an affecting factor in feelings of crowding and spaciousness.
Time is another critical factor in establishing a sense of place. This is not only because it takes time to develop an attachment to place – as Tuan points out, brief, intense experiences can have more impact on a life than extended familiarity – but also time as directional (goal-oriented) and cyclical process in a way that affects our perception of space.
Tuan’s idea of place is broad. For him, people and objects can be places as easily as locations. It is the meaning and significance embedded in these objects that transforms them into places for people. So place can happen over a wide range of scales from domestic objects through particular buildings to regional areas and cities.
Symbolic space can have three forms: mythical, pragmatic or abstract. Mythical space is the blurry boundaries on the edge of known space. Pragmatic space is the ‘known’ directly experienced space, this is on the way to abstract or conceptual space where the experienced place is rationalised by an analytical mind.
Part of my proposal was that equating ‘location’ to absolute positioning is limiting and this book begins to explain why this is and suggests alternative perspectives on space and place from an experiential viewpoint. The relationship of time and movement to our experience of space and place is talked about in detail in this book and is approached from various interlinking perspectives including the role of memory, heritage, nomadic people, literacy etc. I need to read these sections again to fully appreciate how this can be integrated into my projects.
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* Posted on: Mon, Jan 30 2006 12:13 PM
* Updated: Thu, Feb 2 2006 8:42 PM
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