Notes on Place:

• Geography = about place and places. But place is not the property of geography
• a concept that travels between disciplines and must be studied using an interdisciplinary approach
• not a specialised piece of academic terminology; can be used in various different ways, almost daily, especially in the English-speaking world
  • place as in particular location or building
  • position in a social hierarchy (i.e. “she put me in my place”)
  • particular order of things that have a socio-geographical basis (i.e. “a place for everything and everything in its place”
• defined as all spaces which people have made meaningful, spaces people are attached to in one way or another; a meaningful location
• Three aspects of place by John Agnew:
  • 1. Location – fixed objective coordinates on the earth’s surface
  • 2. Locale – actual shape of place which people conduct their lives (i.e. New York as a vast collection of roads and streets and buildings)
  • 3. Sense of place – relationship to humans (i.e. novels and films evoking a sense of place, the feeling of what’s it like to “be there”)
• Naming – one of the ways space can be given meaning and become place