ABSTRACT

What is this place I’m in? How did it come about? Who does it belong to? What distinguishes it from other places? Over the past several decades, an interdisciplinary discourse in the fields of geography, sociology, architecture, and urbanism has developed around such questions. It is acknowledged that places are varied with respect to scale. A place can be an entire town, a neighborhood, a public square, a building, or an interior. Place comes with a location and limits. It is as if it is a point inside of a plane, a measured mark in the blur of worldly experience where specific events take place and we take notice (Meinig 1979: 3). In such discussions of cultural or urban place, as distinct from natural, wilderness place, scholars are intrigued by how place is constructed as a site of meaning, how it generates experiences and how it is imbued with them. Place requires stability, both for its physical qualities to blossom and persevere, and for the time-consuming manner by which we apprehend and interact with them (Cresswell 2004: 11–12).