Sense of Place

Question 1

What are the five major themes of human geography?

Answer 1

1. Regions
2. Location
3. Place
4. Movement
5. Human-Environment Interaction

Question 2

Wendell Berry said: “If you don’t know ____ you are, you don’t know ______who you are.”

Answer 2

1. Where

2. Who

Question 3

A sense of place is much more than ______, since it is often developed through an __________

Answer 3

1. reflection on location

2. intensive investment in lived experience

Question 4

What are the three things a sense of place tied to?

Answer 4

1. Location
2. Personal Investment
3. Landscape

Question 5

What are the components of location?

Answer 5

1. Tied to a certain location
(building, neighborhood,
street, region, nation, 
continent)
2. Specific coordinates/
Identifiable boundaries
3. A place can also exist in 
memory only (fictitious or
otherwise)

Question 6

What are the components of personal investment?

Answer 6

1. A Social Construct
2. Place is linked to people
   (words spoken,
   vows exchanged,
3. Promises made,
   demands issued,
   folk songs, smells, sounds, et cetera.)

Question 7

What are the components of landscape?

Answer 7

.1. Natural features
(Great Lakes, Florida Keys)
2. Buildings
(Brick rowhouses, antebellum mansions, Inner-city housing projects, landmarks)

Question 8

A sense of place is…

1. A set of personal, family, and community ______ that include features of place.
2. The attribution of ___________ to a place. The “soul” of a place; its genius loci.
3. __________ of a place. (Knowledge that is difficult to transfer to somebody by means of writing it down or verbalizing it)
4. ___________” To lack a sense of place is to be “_________.” One may have a sense of place when walking, for instance, but become utterly disoriented when in an automobile.
5. As synthetic but systematized body of knowledge about a place. In this meaning, systematic knowledge of place is embedded in an articulated system of a higher order_________

Answer 8

1. narratives
2. non-material characteristics
3. tacit knowledge of a place
4. the notion of “being oriented”, disoriented
5. Knowledge about parts but a sense of the whole.

Question 9

What are some ‘Threats to Place’

Answer 9

1. A national restlessnesss
2. The homogenization of the built environment/culture
3. Emerging digital age

Question 10

What is national restlessness?

Answer 10

1. In the U.S. people move on average once every 5 years
2. Tough to build a sense of community when people are on the move
3. Difficult to convince yourself to getting attached to place if you know you are likely to leave
4. The decline of social capital (Robert Putnam)

Question 11

What is the homogenization of the built environment/ culture

Answer 11

1. A landscape cluttered with sameness
2. Increased threats to local cuisine, architecture, hospitality, entertainment
3. The land of shopping malls and suburbia
4. “The Geography of Nowhere” (James Howard Kunstler)

Question 12

What is the emerging digital age?

Answer 12

1. People and industry are no longer tied to place

2. Footloose capital (no longer tied to river/rail access)

Question 13

What is footloose capital?

Answer 13

1. An industry whose location is not influenced strongly by access either to materials or markets, and which can therefore operate within a very wide range of locations.
2. Pressure on places to compete with one another

Question 14

Why does place matter?

Answer 14

1. Acts as a repository for our shared memories, experiences, and dreams
2. Helps create a sense of belonging and of commitment
3. When people feel connected to a place – emotionally, culturally, and spiritually – they are more apt to care for it.

Question 15

“Understanding what makes our place different from the next, what accumulations of story upon history upon natural history give it its uniqueness may ________. Attachment to place________.

Answer 15

1. May help us to maintain a relationship which ensures a future for local distinctiveness.
2. Is a prerequisite to endeavor on its behalf.”