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A Sense of Place
A sense of place results gradually and unconsciously from inhabiting
a landscape over time, becoming familiar with its physical properties,
accruing history within its confines.
Ken Ryden, Mapping the Invisible Landscape, 38
If sense of place is a metaphorical construct of the relationship between
people and place, an exploration into the imaginary world of utopia, dystopia,
and cyberspace can be a process of spatial cognition and place-learning. As
the preceding chapters have shown, this process is both cognitive and
metaphorical in nature, cognitive in that imaginary space and place can be
conceptualized, metaphorical in that such conceptualization must rely on
representation and analogy. In this process of learning how imaginary space
and place are metaphorically related to the lived world, we learn to know the
strength of sense of place.
In creating the imaginary place of utopia or dystopia, each writer displays
his/her own style of organizing space cognitively according to his/her own
particular history of place-learning.
Likewise, as readers, we return to our
own particular history of place-learning to find a mental response to a
particular kind of spatial problem.
We then tend to develop it as a distinctive
cognitive pattern, a template upon which to organize the imaginary world.
We form an impression or tentative picture of the imaginary place on the basis
of our earlier spatial experiences, and focus our attention on metaphors that fit
well within the expectations derived from our experiences.
Initial
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conceptualization of place, as suggested in Lakoff’s idea of conceptual
mapping, influences later conceptualization of place by providing a framework
into which later information is placed. Imaginary space and place not only
have spatial dimension; they also contain place meanings cued in part by
cognized spatial form of spatial metaphor.
In reading utopian/dystopian narratives or traveling in the world of
computer networks, we not only develop sophisticated spatial capabilities, but
also develop sophisticated place orientations.
We gradually mature into
worlds of increasingly complex place relationships. It seems a reasonable
assumption that this maturation also progresses by stages. This process can
be compared, metaphorically indeed, to the four stages of the development of
children’s spatial awareness that psychologist Jean Piaget conjectures.1
In the first stage of spatial maturity, children begin to construct a system of
relationships between objects based on the manipulation of objects.
Still in
their infancy, children associate self-initiated action and related body
sensations as isolated events; with the coordination of sight and movement,
they learn to relate objects perceived at different times.
We are like a
newborn infant when we are first confronted with an imaginary place based on
a utopian or dystopian text. There is a blur of sensation: a sea of sight, sound,
smell and feeling, represented by textual signs.
By remembering highly
repetitious stimulus patterns, we slowly come to recognize certain states of
spatial existence. Islands, dreamlands, and future states are such stimulus
1
The four stages are the sensorimotor (0-2 years), preoperational (2-7 years), concrete
operational (7-11 years), and formal operational periods (11 and older).
See Jean Piaget
and Barbel Inhelder, The Child's Conception of Space, trans. F. J. Langdon and J. L. Lunzer
(New York: Norton, 1967), 155-60.
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patterns.
Most importantly, we separate ourselves from the imaginary
surroundings as an entity or object of the most profound place significance.
By identifying with the major character, we tend to imagine that we are in that
place and isolate ourselves in that seemingly enclosed place. Essentially
immobile like the infant’s, our self-generated activities are bodily focused in an
initial stage of place awareness.
Like an infant learning to crawl and thus
propel itself in a horizontal plane, spatial metaphors, like objects apart from us,
take on meaning through use. The concrete primitive meaning of exploration
is supplemented and elaborated by use and function of spatial metaphors.
We
look for spatial metaphors that can help us transfer our spatial experiences of
the lived world into the imaginary world.
buildings are usually our targets.
Spatial metaphors like cities and
Most utopias and dystopias come to us as
cities, even though most of them are actually much more extensive than just an
urban area.
Once we come to the stage when children learn to walk, our world of
valuable spatial metaphors expands potentially and exponentially, although like
most children, our movements are highly contained within localized territories
of utopia or dystopia.
We are like children in Piaget’s second period of
spatial maturity, who grow to be able to transform the mental construct of their
surroundings in very elementary ways. Children in this stage can realize that
one arrives at different locations when one goes in different directions, but are
still unable to conceptualize the reverse sequence of locations along a given
route. In a similar stage, we rely on the narrator, who now plays the role of a
parent (and especially the mother)2 and becomes an equal focus of value. An
2
Tuan writes: “Mother may well be the first enduring and independent object in the infant's
world of fleeting impressions.
Later she is recognized by the child as his essential shelter
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emerging sense of place appropriateness is tied to the narrator’s availability or
accessibility.
The narrator may act like an omnipotent god, knowing
everything, like the ones in Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.
The narrator may be a traveler who reports what he has learned on the journey,
like Hythloday and Guest. Or like D-503 in Zamyatin’s We, the narrator is
the one who comes from the imaginary world to report everything he has
experienced.
To know more about the imaginary place and its utopian value
or dystopian principle, we have to follow the narrator, moving along the paths
he has been through and seeing whatever he sees or allows us to see.
The third stage that Piaget conjectures is marked by increased
sophistication of image transformation.
For children, what takes place in one
direction can also take place in the opposite.
Children can look at objects in
space from a multiplicity of viewpoints and can express these experiences
using abstract language. By the end of this period, children have grasped the
following spatial concepts: first, proximity—the nearness of one object one to
another; second, separation—the disassociation of objects; third, order—the
spatial succession of objects; fourth, enclosure—the surrounding of objects by
other objects; and fifth, continuity—the totality of objects seen as a complete
distribution in space (Piaget and Inhelder, 1967: 3).
Likewise, the third stage of our place awareness involves a bounded
territory where we become attached not only to significant persons and other
significant metaphors, but also to localities of interest that contain various
persons, objects, and activities.
We learn to pay attention to King Utopus and
and dependable source of physical and psychological comfort.”
The Perspective of Experience, 29.
See his Space and Place:
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the myth of his creation of utopia, to Old Hammond and the history of
revolution leading to his era, and to I-330 and her subversive activities with
Mephis against the One State.
Moreover, like young boys or girls, we
consider an imaginary place to be a large and somewhat immobile type of
metaphor that represents a locus of some recognized (utopian) satisfaction or
(dystopian) dissatisfaction. At first, such a large metaphor has less meaning
than small metaphors in the imaginary place because, unlike portable toys or
security blankets for boys and girls, it cannot be handled and moved easily
(Piaget and Inhelder, 1967: 3). It is true that the imaginary place of utopia or
dystopia, though a spatial metaphor, cannot be as easily dealt with as a simple
analogy.
Below the surface of being a territory, utopia or dystopia is a
multi-facet construct that encompasses territoriality and many other elements
concerning geopolitics and terrritorializatoin.
Nonetheless, we do come to
value imaginary places as spaces to be occupied bodily rather than possessed
merely through handling. At this stage, we become concerned with the name
of place and to develop a sense of territoriality or possession relative to
close-by places or to places used frequently or intimately.
Again, like
children of this stage, we begin to apply a single idea of place to different kinds
of imaginary places.
Panopticon is such an idea that may be employed to
utopia or dystopia, due to its place-bound structure and control-oriented
mechanism.
In Piaget’s last period of spatial maturity, children are liberated from
concrete reality in that they are able to pose truly abstract hypotheses. They
can use spatial images that entail unreal transformations from apparent reality.
These transformations are topological, projective, and geometrical.
Topological transformations involve rules of proximity, separation, sequence,
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and closure, which remain invariant under continuous deformation.
Projective transformations involve spatial relations constructed according to
various points of view, as when the surface of a sphere is reproduced on a flat
surface in different ways.
Geometrical transformations involve metrical
relationships that coordinate space with respect to a system of outside reference
points (Piaget and Inhelder, 1967: 3).
This stage holds true of the process of our place learning.
especially visual ones, loom over the horizon of our perception.
Spatial images,
They may be
manipulated for the purpose of distorting reality and producing politically
correct messages, or they may be utilized as a means to create hyperreality that
can or potentially substitute reality.
On the other hand, our bounded range is
expanded by disjointed route/destination combinations.
Acting as a traveler
in the imaginary world, like children who regularly sit in the family automobile,
we develop a clear sense of “here” and “there.” But in cyberspace, we still
need to develop a complete notion of the intervening linkages between such
places.
We are like children, “caught up in the excitement of people, things,
and events; going from one place to another is not their responsibility” (Tuan,
1977: 29).
Our geographic horizon of the imaginary place expands, but not
necessarily step-by-step, toward the larger scale. Our interest and knowledge
may focus first on a small community on the web and then, skipping the
neighborhood, shift to the city before jumping to foreign territories (like
frontiers) without ever anchoring on the region. In this process, we develop
an ability to categorize settings according to generic “place-types”—
architectural or territorial. The global space is seen to differ from the
architectural and territorial ones, which, in turn, are seen to differ from the
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global one.
Our recognition that different kinds of behavior are often
appropriate in these varied places grows in sophistication.
Having attained the last stage of our learning process of place awareness,
we are like children who have learned to function effectively in a fully
integrated activity space.
is contemplated.
We retain the viewpoint from which the lived world
Although we have escaped, in large measure, the confines of
imaginary place as a bounded space, the narrator of utopian/dystopian
narratives (who has once played the role of parent) remains a primary focus for
support.
The narrator’s effective world stretches beyond fictional, local place
to global space.
At this point, the meaningful behavior settings of our lived
world, fostered by a sense of place, are effectively related across differences of
scale. Like an experienced traveler, we know how different settings are
linked, and we can negotiate effectively between them, even in the world of
computer networks.
We have developed our own style of being in places
differently defined by spatial metaphors.
It enables us to travel from place to
place, comparing each imaginary place with our own and learning how its
spatial formation influences our perception of the place.
We have learned the
behaviors appropriate to different kinds of imaginary places, to our own
satisfaction. It brings us a sophisticated sense of how different meanings of
imaginary place are cued.
We recognize sophisticated nuances of imaginary
place meanings as they are encoded in landscape and townscape created by
literary text or hypertext. As a result, we carry a sophisticated cognitive map
of the imaginary world comprised of linked sets of place expectations.
While our learning of imaginary space and place has more to do with
conceptualizing the positioning of spatial metaphors defined as places, this
spatial learning has more to do with conceptualizing the content of localities
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thus metaphorized.
Our place learning goes well beyond the mere spatial
dimension to embrace the full spectrum of meaning by which imaginary places
are anticipated and used. Nonetheless, we are still vulnerable to the confusion
that exists in geography and other disciplines as to the relationship between the
concept of space and that of place. Many scholars use the two terms
synonymously.
This happens so often that even the concept of sense of place
is usually made to stand as a convenient alternative for the concept of spatial
sense. For many geographers, the concept of place is firmly rooted in notions
of location variously expressed.
“Place,” for Donald Meinig, “commonly
refers to a definite area, a fixed location” (Meinig, 1979: 3); while for Edward
Relph, location is only incidental, with space providing a mere context for
place (Relph, 1976: 8).
So critical of abstract space is Lefebvre that he hardly
discusses the difference between the two concepts. Yet, he reminds us that
abstract space “serves those forces which make a tabula rasa of whatever
stands in their way, of whatever threatens them—in short, of differences”
(Lefebvre, 1991: 285).
His idea is particularly right about the disappearance
of “we” when he continues: “These forces seem to grind down and crush
everything before them, with space performing the function of a plane, a
bulldozer, or a tank” (Lefebvre, 1991: 285).
the homogenizing power of abstract space.
Indeed, everything surrenders to
We—people—are no exception.
The involvement of people is usually ignored when the relationship between
place and space becomes a focus.
It should be noted that place and space are linked together only when we3
are involved. In defining the place and space as complementary ideas, Tuan
3
To emphasize the involvement of human factor in the relationship between place and space,
“we” and “our” are italicized in the following passages of this paragraph.
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writes: “In experience the meaning of space often merges with that of place”
(Tuan, 1977: 29).
He explains:
From security of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and
threat of space, and vice versa. Furthermore, if we think of space as
that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in
movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place.
(1977: 29)
For Tuan, space is given by our ability to move.
Our movements are
directed toward, or repulsed by places as objects. Space can be variously
experienced by us as the relative location of places, as well as the distances that
separate or link places.
The way Tuan defines space and place appears to
derive from our need to define relationships among different spatial elements.
He equates the idea of space with wide-open vistas or panoramas implying
unhindered movement.
By contrast, he equates the idea of place with
enclosure: “Enclosed and humanized space is place” (Tuan, 1977: 6).
To
emphasize his point, he continues: “Compared to space, place is a calm center
of established values.”(Tuan, 1977: 12).
Thus place is shelter and space is
venture, the former attachment and the latter freedom. The “boundedness of
place” is seen to contrast with the “exposure of space” (Tuan, 1977: 54).
Sense of place is embedded in the concept of place.
It is an imperative
that architects deal with sense of place when they design a living space. Unlike
geographers, architects see space in three rather than two dimensions. For
them, space is a three-dimensional enclosure, as opposed to the
two-dimensional configuration geographers conceptualize. Such space is
designated to enclose or encompass. Such space surrounds, or potentially
surrounds, in an all-encompassing sense
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Space is something that gives form to place as one aspect of
place-meaning. Christian Norberg-Schultz writes: “Whereas ‘space’ denotes
the three-dimensional organization of the elements which make up a place,
‘character’ denotes the general ‘atmosphere’ which is the most comprehensive
property of any place.”
Places, he notes, are designated by nouns as they are
considered “real things that exist” (Norberg-Schultz, 1980: 11).
system of relations, is denoted instead by prepositions.
Space, as a
He writes: “In our
daily life we hardly talk about ‘space,’ but about things that are ‘over’ or
‘under,’ ‘before’ or ‘behind’ each other, or we use prepositions such as ‘at,’
‘in,’ ‘within,’ ‘on,’ ‘upon,’ ‘to,’ ‘from,’ ‘along,’ ‘next’”(Norberg-Schultz, 1980:
16). Prepositions denote topological relations that represent the abstract
essence of space. The other characteristics of place are denoted by adjectives.
Space, he concludes, is a problem of orientation and place a problem of
expectation:
When man dwells, he is simultaneously located in space and exposed
to a certain environmental character.
The two psychological
functions involved may be called ‘orientation’ and ‘identification.’
To gain an existential foothold, man has to be able to orientate
himself; he has to know where he is. But he also has to identify
himself with the environment, that is, he has to know how he is in a
certain place. (Norberg-Schultz, 1980: 19)
It is in this latter sense of place as identification that spatial metaphors
move beyond the realm of spatial preoccupation.
Spatial metaphors turn a
place into an object or entity conceptualized in two-dimensional geographical
space but retaining a three-dimensional spatial form. Above all, it is a focus
of meaning, character, and identity for an imaginary place.
It is in the
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recognition of this identity, even when such recognition can vaguely reveal
spatial implications, that the concept of imaginary place has real value. This
is the same recognition that Tuan emphasizes for places with physical reality:
“Places are centers of value,” Tuan writes. “They attract or repel in finely
shaded degrees. To attend them even momentarily is to acknowledge their
reality and value” (Tuan, 1977: 18).
Spatial metaphor is the carrier of sense of place. It appeals to a sense of
three-dimensional spatial form when we are situated in a two-dimensional
context. Imaginary space provides only the background for spatial metaphors.
What makes an imaginary city impressive is not so much the bulk of the
buildings grouped in it, but its spatial, metaphorical meaning that is linked to
our lived world. Imaginary space is less tangible than the spatial metaphors it
contains.
Imaginary space is what remains between spatial metaphors,
because imaginary space is derived from its metaphorical boundaries. But it
is spatial metaphor, not imaginary space, that usually attracts attention. This
can be understood the way Robert Yudell deals with the relationship between
forms and space:
It is not surprising that forms are more often the focus of our attention
than space or movement in space.
Space is typically thought of as a
void or as the absence of solid, and movement thought of as a domain
separate from its existence in space.4
Space stands as a useful concept to be imposed on the imaginary world to help
make our experience coherent.
4
Space by itself, however, is an insufficient
The passages of Robert J. Yudell are cited in Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, Body,
Memory, and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 57.
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schemata to comprehend how writers structure and use spatial metaphors.
Rather, it is the concept of place, a schemata of focused meaning cued in part
by spatial form, that deserves attention.
Yudell’s idea can further help us better understand the role of imaginary
place. An imaginary place is the sum of all spatial metaphors that combine to
give a sense of behavioral focus through expectation. It comes with its
identity or character through the satisfactions or dissatisfactions anticipated as
variously cued by spatial metaphors both animate and inanimate.
Identity is a
unique configuration of all the spatial metaphors that amount to make up a
place. Implicit in these spatial metaphors are behavioral expectations.
Accordingly, the role of utopian writers is to recognize and exploit different
identities of utopian place in such a manner as to match the human needs
implicit in the lived world. This matching is a problem of recognizing these
identities, of giving them appropriate spatial metaphors, and of identifying their
spatial meanings with textual articulation.
The way to an expressive and
exciting imaginary place is through the creation of separate identities—a good
place, an island, a state, etc.—each forming an essential part of the whole. A
utopian writer creates these identities through a sense of place that spatial
metaphors mold as they form spatial sequences.
Cyberspace is an ensemble of spatial sequences molded by spatial
metaphors.
It is imagined as a construct much bigger than a traditional city.
Yet, it can be articulated only when we are involved.
and we map.
We move, we memorize,
When we move, we create more alternative trajectories; when
we memorize, we learn by heart each spatial metaphor; and when we map, we
regain the sense of place lost to its image-laden hyperreality.
In fact, we act
more like a traveler in cyberspace, and on our journey we experience a variety
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of spatial identities attributable to the imaginary space.
As we travel through
spatial sequences in cyberspace, there gradually arises in us a territorial identity
that matches the one we have in the lived world. It is the same territorial
identity that has help position us in any other imaginary space or place. It
builds in us not only a capability of being oriented by the surrounding
metaphors, but also a set of tacit knowledge of the imaginary place.
With this
territorial identity, we can understand an imaginary place without needing an
articulated system or systematic structure.
Finally, our spatial experiences are
integrated into a mental model called sense of place.
Such a mental model
helps us situate ourselves in an imaginary place, thereby producing our spatial
relationship with the imaginary place, whether it is utopia, dystopia, or
cyberspace.
We carry it with us, transfer it to other places, and employ it to
decode whatever spatial messages that may come to us.