The nature and importance of place

Question 1

Place

Answer 1

Defined as a location with meaning. Places can be meaningful to individuals in ways that are personal or subjective. Places can also be meaningful at a social or cultural level and these meanings may be shared by different groups of people.

Question 2

Location

Answer 2

‘Where’ a place is, for example, the co-ordinates on a map

Question 3

Locale

Answer 3

This is the place where something happens or is set, or that has particular events associated with it.

Question 4

Sense of place

Answer 4

This refers to the subjective and emotional attachment people have to a place. People develop a ‘sense of place’ through experience and knowledge of a particular area.

Question 5

Perception of place

Answer 5

This is the way in which place is viewed or regarded by people. This can be influenced by media representation or personal experience.

Question 6

Placemaking

Answer 6

The deliberate shaping of an environment to facilitate social interaction and improve a community’s quality of life.

Question 7

Insider perspective

Answer 7

To be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it, and the more profoundly inside you are the stronger is the identity with the place

Question 8

Outsider perscpective

Answer 8

A viewpoint of someone who is not from the certain place/doesn’t live there/has little or no experience of that place

Question 9

Nimbyism

Answer 9

The term Nimby is an acronym for the phrase ‘not in my backyard’ and can be applied to local opposition to developments such as new housing estates or wind farms and fracking proposals.

Question 10

Positionality

Answer 10

Factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, religion, politics and socio-economic status, which influence how we perceive different
places.

Question 11

Near and far places

Answer 11

Refers to the geographical distance between places. Equally, they could describe the emotional connection with a particular place and how comfortable a person feels within that place. ‘Near’ places do not automatically foster identities of familiarity and belonging and that in these days of globalised culture, travel and media, far-off places are not automatically strange, uncomfortable and different.

Question 12

Experienced place

Answer 12

Those places that a person has spent time in.

Question 13

Media place

Answer 13

Those that the person has only read about or seen on film

Question 14

Factors affecting the character of place

Answer 14

• Socio-economic factors (employment oppourtunites, health, crime rates)
• Cultural factors (heritage, religion, language)
• Political factors (strength of local council)
• Built environment (land use, type of housing, building materials)
• Location (urban or rural, main roads, proximity to other settlements)
• Demographics (population size, ethnicity)
• Physical Geography (relief, soil and rock type, altitude)

Question 15

Endogenous factors

Answer 15

In the context of place, this refers to the characteristics of the place itself or factors which have originated internally. This would include aspects such as location, physical geography, land use and social
and economic characteristics such as population size and employment rates.

Question 16

Exogenous factors

Answer 16

This refers to the relationship of one place with other places and the external factors which affect this. The demographic, socio-economic and cultural characteristics of a place are shaped by shifting flows of people, resources, money and investment.