As we already know what [place] means, it is hard to get beyond that common-sense level to understand it in a more developed way. Place, then, is both simple and complicated.
                                                                                                                                      – Tim Cresswell

In the introduction to his book, Place: An Introduction, Tim Cresswell attempts to define place in a simple way. This proves difficult, and I am left wanting to read more of his book to understand place.

As Cresswell says, we use the word place in everyday life without think too much about its meaning. A place is somewhere we go, somewhere we are, or somewhere we have been. It is a physical space, but at the same time its boundaries are invisible.

How does a place become a place? Why draw the invisible line that divides one country from another, therefore forming two distinct and separate places? Politics plays a role, culture plays a role, and collective consciousness plays a role. And so even though we use the word place al the time, the word is complicated and undefinable.

Cresswell talks of how a place can become significant, drawing on a park in New York, previously bland and uninteresting, but transformed after the Occupy Protest took it up as a base. He says that a couple of hundred protestors made this park into a place. Some trees and benches became the home of a movement. But I have never heard of this park. The peak of the Occupy Movement was years ago. Even after having stayed in New York for two months, the name of this park means nothing to me. So even though a place can be made significant, it can also be made insignificant.

Cresswell’s introduction to place serves as a good starting point for this semester. It has got me thinking about place, about what it is and how we can explore it. Place is simultaneously physical and imaginary, significant and insignificant. Place is interesting.