Place Identity

In this chapter, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to explore environmental embodiment—the various lived ways, sensorily and motility-wise, that the body in its pre-reflective perceptual presence engages and synchronizes with the world at hand, especially its architectural and environmental aspects. First, I consider Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of perception, giving particular attention to his claim that perception involves a lived dynamic between perceptual body and world such that aspects of the world—for example, the heavy hardness of a granite block or the cool smoothness of a chrome railing—are known because they immediately evoke in the lived body their experienced qualities.

Second, I consider the architectural and environmental significance of what Merleau-Ponty calls body-subject—pre-reflective corporeal awareness expressed through action and typically in sync with and enmeshed in the physical world in which the action unfolds. I focus on the taken-for-granted sensibility of body-subject to manifest in extended ways over time and space. I ask how routine actions and behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in an environment can transform that environment into a place with a unique dynamic and character—a lived situation I term place ballet. For both perception and body-subject, I consider how qualities of the physical and designable world—for example, materiality, form, and spatiality—contribute to the lived body’s engagement with and actions in the world.

Note: This chapter was written in 2014 for a proposed edited collection on Merleau-Ponty and architecture. Unfortunately, the editors did not find a publisher(though I was never officially informed of this fact). The chapter has been rewritten, revised, and updated; see the above entry: "Merleau-Ponty, Environmental Embodiment, and Place" (2022)
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This article examines the conception of the everyday city as presented in the work of architect Christopher Alexander and architectural theorist Bill Hillier: Both thinkers suggest that, in the past, lively urban places arose unself-consciousty through the routine daily behaviors of many individual users coming together in supportive space and place. In different ways. both thinkers ask whether, today, a similar manner of vital urban district can be made to happen self-conscioustv through explicit understanding transformed into design and policy principles. The aim for both Alexander and Hillier is place-based urban communities marked by lively streets, serendipitous public encounters, and informal sociability. The article begins by examining commonalities and differences in Alexander and Hillier's conceptions of environmental wholeness and urban place. Next. the article considers implications for urban design and, last, indicates the considerable value that the two thinkers' ideas offer environmental philosophy, particularly for understanding environmental wholes.

Drawing on previous work on environmental justice, social construction of environment, and sense-of-place theory, this paper will examine the relationship between inequity, landscape meaning, and place identity using the case of the Gullah/Geechee. This study will examine the effects of changes to the environment and landscape on members of the Gullah/Geechee community, focusing on possible effects on place identity due to acts of environmental injustice, specifically among residents of Hog Hammock on Sapelo Island, Georgia.

Looking at the development of place attachments and 'home' within a temporary housing context, this paper examines two specific Asylum Seeker housing schemes in Zürich, Switzerland, namely the TWS Aargauerstrasse and the TWS Leutschenbachstrasse. These case studies are viewed through two lenses, firstly, the modification of the temporary space itself, and secondly, the use of furniture and objects within the space. These lenses will allow one to determine the case studies value based on the success in creating new place attachments and feelings of satisfaction.

W niniejszym artykule została podjęta próba wskazania wybranych, odnoszących się do marketingu miejsc tendencji, które wydają się istotne z punktu widzenia promocji i rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego jednostek terytorialnych. W tym ujęciu marketing miejsc można rozumieć jako odpowiedź na zapotrzebowanie w obszarze profesjonalnego zarządzania jednostkami terytorialnymi. Na wstępie zostały przedstawione teoretyczne aspekty marketingu miejsc, w dalszej części scharakteryzowano poszczególne tendencje, wśród których przykładowo można wymienić markowe produkty turystyczne, promocję miejsca poprzez sport, spa&wellness, turystykę konferencyjną, zintensyfikowaną promocję gospodarczą. W ramach podsumowania zaprezentowano wybrane korzyści wynikające ze stosowania rozwiązań wpisujących się w marketing miejsc.

Identity of a given place arises from a combination of social and cultural characteristics of the related community which reincarnated in physical shapes and forms of the urban locality. Soaring growth of contemporary cities beside recent transformations of traditional urban spaces have been caused some gaps between physical features of urban environments and their cultural identities. This issue, accordingly, supports the need of special attentions to the cultural and social aspects of transforming places under a process of urban design/planning. We provide here an analysis framework with emphasis to the identity of the place from the cultural aspects of the settlement. This technique mainly concerns to identify cultural features of the urban spaces and preserve them during further urban regeneration. To this aim, representative factors of the places identity are hybridized with the characteristic elements of cultural landscape and collected as a matrix of cultural landscapes, CLs. We convinced from the analysis that it may be oversimplification if solely attention to the physical features for improving quality of urban identity whiles it is affected by some nonphysical aspects, as well. Provided matrix of CLs is also implemented for a test case. Some factors of cultural landscape are discovered and the related effects on urban identity of designing place are discussed in micro and macro scales. Analysis highlighted some tangible/intangible characteristics of the studied public urban area which have to be critically considered through further transformation of the place. Accordingly, a preliminary design of the example studying area is suggested as a green linkage space between natural area in countryside and cultural realms in central parts of Mashhad city.

The current city is essentially a visual, acoustic and kinetic manifestation, but it’s also a psychic landscape not lacking of vacuity of sense and discontinuity. It’s argued the strategic necessity of a design that projects by the functions extension and improves its influence as a system that catches the identities, giving back meaning to territories and improvement strategies. A new design philosophy becomes necessary, which action strategic centre is in people’s life environment for the extension from human design to ambient design. Sound also belongs to the strategic requalification project. R. M. Schafer said that today the world suffers from the overflow of sounds: there is too much acoustic information thus only a small part of it can be clearly perceived. Regarding this are mentioned some didactic project experiences done at Politecnico di Milano, Facoltà del Design, that keep a planning approach sustainable to the urban landscape, starting from perceptive aspects and in particular the chromatic and acoustic ones.

We can observe two important changes that involve many territorial realities. On the one hand their identity is constantly changing, causing a progressive loss of the sense of belonging. On the other, tourism industry registers an increased interest in experiences which involve at the same time natural, cultural and social aspects of the place. In this context, the communication design for urban environment needs to find new paradigms in order to deal with the ongoing changes. The direction suggested in this paper regards the topic of the ‘communicative access’, intended as a tool to make the urban space comprehensible. In this sense, communication design becomes a meeting point between a functional communication (for the orientation) and the design of in-depth contents at different levels - from the cartographic representation to the ‘perceived space’. Therefore, the suggested design approach is focused on the development of formats and tools for the re-semanticization of places by means of unconventional points of view. The design effort regards content and languages, searching for new interlinks between storytelling and physical spaces.

The aim of this review is to bring the phenomenological sense of place approach together with current results from neuroscience. We searched in neuroscientific literature for ten dimensions which were beforehand identified to be important in a phenomenological sense of place/place identity model: behaviour, body, emotion, attention, perception, memory, orientation, spirituality, meaning/value and culture/sociality. Neuroscience has identified many neurobiological correlates of phenomenological observations concerning sense of place. The human brain comprises specific and specialised structures and processes to perceive, memorise, link, assess and use spatial information. Specific parts (hippocampus, entorhinal, parahippocampal and parietal cortex), subregions (parahippocampal place area, lingual landmark area), and cells (place cells, grid cells, border cells, head direction cells) have been identified, their specific function could be understood and their interaction traced. Neuroscience has provided evidence that place constitutes a distinct dimension in neuronal processing. This reinforces the phenomenological argumentation of human geography and environmental psychology.

Amid a globally increasing trend of urban segregation, this article asks why a particular urban place, the Gangnam area in the city of Seoul, has come to symbolize the rich and the powerful, consolidating both socioeconomic segregation and political conservatism in a short span of time. While different approaches exist that partially explain Gangnam’s luxurious lifestyles, fervent real estate speculation, obsession with education, and political conservatism, this article seeks to provide a holistic explanation for the rise of Gangnam and draws particular attention to the social construction of place identity. Based on the analysis of historically and contextually grounded evidence, imaginations, and cognitive scaling of different stakeholders, it suggests bidirectional formations of self–other and present–future identities, highlighting the sociopsychological aspects of place identity formation. Specifically, it explains political conservatism as the attempts of Gangnam residents to sustain the area’s entrance barrier and pass on their exclusivity to future selves and children.

That talk is never disinterested complicates the relationship between the environment and the claims people make about it. Talk about place, and one's self in it, is particularly complex when the environment poses risk or is otherwise problematized. This study, a secondary analysis of interview data, seeks to extend discursive work on place-identity by examining the ways in which 14 residents of a small English village talk about themselves and their locale. The locale accommodates an active quarry, and many residents had lodged complaints to the quarry about dust, noise and vibrations from blasting. Attention to the interactional context of the interviews illustrates the ways in which (simply) interviewing people about their locale can threaten self- and place-identity. When asked about life in the village, interviewees oriented to two main dilemmas in protecting self- and place-identity: (1) how to justify continued residence in a challenging environment and (2) how to complain about the locale whilst maintaining positive place-identity. Discursive responses to these dilemmas drew upon typical identity processes, such as self- and place distinctiveness and the formulation of out-groups, as well as upon constructions of localized power-sharing and morally obligated tolerance of risk. We suggest that research on problematical places, and of environmental risk, needs to be sensitized to how it may constitute a threat to self- and place-identity, and how this may mediate formulations self and place, as well as of environmental risk.

This is a Course Description for a new course being developed by Professor Smirniotopoulos in the School of Business at George Mason University outside Washington, D.C. This course is intended as a foundation course for a concentration in Real Estate Development and Finance (REDFin) Professor Smirniotopoulos is also developing at GMUSB. Comments to and other feedback on the attached Course Description are welcome.

The Meaning of Place is based on Professor Smirniotopoulos’ Spring 2001 essay of the same title, published in Urban Land magazine ﴾Vol. 60, No. 3, March 2001﴿. This essay received the Urban Land Institute’s inaugural Apgar Urban Land Award in 2002 (then simply named “the Apgar Award”). The Apgar Urban Land Award recognizes “the industry practice articles that clearly communicate ideas, knowledge, research, and expertise for the benefit of the entire real estate community “each year in Urban Land magazine.

The essay is premised on the juxtaposition of authentic places that have evolved organically over long periods of time—think Greenwich Village in New York City; Old Town (or the colloquial “Olde Towne”) in the City of Alexandria, Virginia; Georgetown in Washington, D.C.; Haight Ashbury in San Francisco; and Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach, Miami—with newly minted venues like the Mosaic District in Fairfax County, Virginia; Horton Plaza in San Diego; and Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio. This latter category of “New Town Centers” are designed by a cadre of planners, designers, and architects, carefully orchestrated and managed by a new breed of property managers Yaromir Steiner of Steiner & Associates, co-developer of Easton Town Center, calls “animators,” and Professor Christopher Leinberger at The George Washington University Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis calls “place managers.” These “new places” are intended to emulate or mimic the authenticity of their antecedents.

The course is structured around ten (10) books Professor Smirniotopoulos considers to be “essential works on the meaning of place,” authored by a diverse group of thinkers on the subject including urbanists,  architects, urban planners, demographers, cartographers, and social scientists. The following ten books comprise the Required Reading list for the course. However, the listing below is not necessarily reflective of the order in which each book will be assigned and discussed in class throughout the semester:

• Camillo Sitte's classic, The Art of Building Cities (Italian, 1889; English translation 1945)
• Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (French, 1958; English translation, 1964)
• Jane Jacobs' classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
• Edward T. Hall’s The Hidden Dimension (1966)
• Mildred Reed Hall and Edward T. Hall’s The Fourth Dimension in Architecture (1975)
• William H. "Holly" White's The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980)
• Tony Hiss' The Experience of Place (1990)
• Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (2014)
• Colin Ellard's Places of the Heart (2015)
• Jonathan F. P. Rose’s The Well-Tempered City (SEP 2016)

This article discusses the account of the settlement of Þórsnes by Þórólfr Mostrarskegg as it is presented in Eyrbyggja saga, relating it to the question of the applicability of current thinking on landscape to the interpretation of Old Norse literature. While current approaches both to landscape in general and to the construction of the landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga in particular tend to emphasise the function of ‘landscape’ as a medium conveying existential ‘meanings’, a close reading of the literary landscape of Þórsnes in Eyrbyggja saga rather suggests that much of the literary construction of this landscape should be seen as consciously grotesque and intended to be understood as  such by the saga’s contemporary audience. Central for this reading is an interpretation of the place-name Dritsker as meaning “Guano Skerry”. This translation is suggested by the lexical evidence but has been avoided by previous critics, who chose to adapt their interpretations
of the place-name to the story told about it in the saga and thus missed an arguably central clue for the interpretation of the saga episode. Some thoughts are also offered on the reasons for why a thirteenth-century author, perhaps working in the monastery at Helgafell, might have chosen to present the past of this area in a purposefully grotesque fashion.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJfpa9vv9pg

This presentation considers how the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) contributes to an understanding of architecture and place experience via his emphasis on the lived body. The focus is on architect Thomas Thiis-Evensen's " architectural archetypes " and architectural theorist Bill Hillier's " space syntax. " The presentation highlights three claims: First, that Thiis-Evensen provides a language for locating unself-conscious, visceral aspects of buildings & architectural meaning (Merleau-Ponty's perception and phenomenal field); second, that Hilllier illustrates how the spatiality of place—i.e., pathway configuration— supports or inhibits particular actions & routines of lived bodies as they come together or remain apart spatially (Merleau-Ponty's body-subject and intercorporeality); and, third, that both Thiis-Evensen & Hillier illustrate ways via architecture and place whereby pre-reflective bodily awareness and actions play an important role in the lifeworld (Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the lived body as intentional but pre-reflective agent).

The loss of place identity that plays a vital role in the urban structure and urban spaces is one of the problems of modern urban spaces and a controversial discussion in urban development literature. The importance of this concern is related to socio-cultural and conceptual aspects of urban spaces as a context of urban life. Due to the emphasis on the role of automobiles , traffic problems, inattention to the real needs of urban residents, pedestrian mobility and ignoring the people, urban development is facing failure because the people's environment, which is entirely connected to their history and culture, is ignored. This includes failing to take into account a sense of identity, relationship between people and their environment, shaping the dimension of place Identity and its indicators and social interactions. Urban public spaces have been considered as an important part of cities during history which have continuously reflected the cultural, social, and economic contexts of cities. In the wave of modernization, majority of urban public spaces have changed their functions and Identity and considered as a traffic node, therefore, it becomes important to evaluate and investigate the use of contemporary urban public spaces and the indicators which effect on regeneration of place identity in urban spaces, and to understand the relationship between people and their physical environment in such urban spaces. The purpose of this research is to place identity urban public spaces uses, and to the relationship between people and their physical environment. In this research, comprehensive literature review is undertaken to identify a potential problem, worthy a research and formulate a research framework. The research method is "analytical-descriptive" .In order to address these questions , this thesis employs a methodology that combines direct field observations, Questionnaire, SPSS Analysis (Chi-Square​ Test, Somer's d Test, Mann-Whitney Test, Kruskal-Wallis H and SWOT analysis ....), and as applied to investigate the indicators and dimension of place Identity in historical urban spaces of Altstadt Münster. Thus, the value of this research is in studying the relationship between the people and the physical settings of urban public spaces through using a mixed methodology(qualitative and quantitative) and exploring SPSS as a tool to describe and investigate dimension and indicators of place identity in historical urban public spaces. Analyzing this relationship and finding the indicators will add insights into place identity and urban public spaces theories and practice which could lead to further studies to improve Design's policies and strategies for regeneration of place identity in the historical squares and the Major factors in Regeneration of place identity in historical urban spaces for planning process.

It is within the context of the growing level of competitiveness between  places, and even the decline of many, that a need has been identified for places to have a marketing focus. As a new and under-researched domain, and also due to some similarities, place marketing research has been guided by the more extensively researched corporate level marketing  and  destination  marketing.  Both  of  these  applications  emphasise  the importance of internal marketing to employees and host populations respectively.  If place marketers are to effectively market 'their'  place, there is a requirement to be able to  defme  and  measure  attributes  of  place  identity  and  in  particular,  perceived  or construed image. This study will make a contribution to this need by first identifying generic attributes of place identity and image. A rating scale is used which will allow for the measurement of each attribute as well as gaps that may exist between identity and construed image. An outcome of this work will be the opportunity for longitudinal studies to monitor changes in place  identity and  image, as well as for comparisons between places, particularly within a competitive  set. This work is of value to place marketers and planners seeking to retain and attract, what are today, the more mobile markets of people and corporations.

Cities' growth shaped of our time. It goes from good to bad. This is why we must look beyond it growth and formation of public spaces is a ‘core incremental of city-making’. The future urban regeneration and community development in Malaysia is to finding an innovative way to help citizen lead and make people feel invested in the place-making process.

This book,  A Geography of the Lifeworld (1979), focuses on a wide-ranging phenomenon labelled everyday environmental experience—the sum total of peoples’ firsthand involvements with the geographical world in which they live. By geographical world is meant the everyday places, spaces, and environments in which people find themselves. The source of experiential descriptions was environmental experience groups, small focus groups of students and other interested participants who were willing to meet weekly to examine in their own daily experience such themes as movement patterns, emotions relating to place, the nature of noticing and attention, the meaning of home and at-homeness, places for things, deciding where to go when, and so forth.

Through a phenomenological explication of the more than 1,500 personal observations offered in these environmental experience groups, the study identifies three overarching themes—movement, rest, and encounter—that appear to mark the essential core of everyday environmental experience.

The section on movement examines the habitual nature of everyday environmental behaviors and argues, after French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), that the lived foundation of these behaviors is the body as preconscious but intelligent subject. The section on rest explores people’s attachment to place and gives particular attention to at-homeness and positive affective relationships with places and environments.

The book’s final section on encounter considers the multifaced ways in which people make attentive contact with their world. Group observations indicate that this range of awareness extends from obliviousness and minimal attentive contact with the world at hand through watching, noticing, and more intense kinds of encounter where the experiencer, at least metaphorically, feels a sense of “merging” with some aspect of world.

The last section of the book examines lived relationships and interconnections among movement, rest, and encounter and argues that their threefold structure offers one simple but integrated way to envision human environmental experience conceptually and to think about design and policy implications practically.

This paper will offer a deeper understanding of coalitions and micropublics in creative placemaking by offering an alternative arts-based placemaking practice (as defined by the National Endowment for the Arts, Markusen and Gadwa 2010) of social practice placemaking (SPPM). This paper is concerned with the co-option of arts into placemaking as a practice of limited public engagement and agency and offers SPPM as a practice that challenges the binary and linear notion of authorship and audience (Kwon 2004, Whybrow 2011) found in creative placemaking.

SPPM creates a situated micropublic constituency of an ‘urban creative’ (Klanten and Hübner 2010) assemblage of artists, community members and urban professionals working in equanimity that engenders deeper feelings of place attachment in the collaborative group, which in turn affects notions of civic participation and individual and community identification.
It will present research findings of global SPPM fieldwork case studies with specific focus on Big Car, Indianapolis. Findings from this case study address issues who may form a placemaking coalition; how these coalitions may operate; ethical concerns of creative and social practice placemaking; these practices as a means of cultural expression; and their relative impact on minority socio-cultural groups.

This special issue has now been published (Dec 2019).

For free access (until 30 January 2020) to its editorial article, go to:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJTC-12-2019-163/full/pdf?title=marketing-smart-tourism-cities-a-strategic-dilemma


For access to the whole special issue, go to:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/2056-5607/vol/5/iss/4

FROM THE BACK COVER: What is the essential nature of meaning? . . . . . This book answers by examining interpretive theories from the past and present. It finds that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation, a struggle that reaches crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand, this crisis is mollified by Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology, which argues that we are always already in a meaningful relationship to the objects of the world. On the other hand, this crisis is exacerbated when phenomenology, structuralism, and aesthetic theory directly make meaning into an object of study. . . . . . . . . These historical developments culminate with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whose non-hermeneutical phenomenology delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity. Intriguingly, Lacan's work reveals meaning to be sexual in nature. By integrating his notion of sexual difference with his work in discourse theory and topology, this book demonstrates how the subject's struggle with meaning can be suspended.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Broadly speaking, the majority of books on Jacques Lacan focus on the earlier periods of his career. They also tend to target the psychoanalytic clinical community, or else discuss his work in various political, social, and cultural contexts. But in almost all cases these books refrain from a detailed exegesis of his actual texts. They instead prefer to comment on his theoretical apparatus as a whole before turning to its practical implications. . . . . . This book positions itself against this grain. Firstly, it closely analyzes some half-dozen key Lacanian texts. This analysis is organized under a single thematic – the question of meaning – in order to advance the reader's understanding of the trajectory of Lacan's thought across his entire career, as well as to promote the book's thesis that the field of meaning can be suspended. Accordingly, an initial chapter takes up the hermeneutical tradition from Flacius onward. This is then supplemented by a chapter which surveys phenomenological, structuralist and aesthetic theories of meaning and their differing methods of textual analysis. Together these two chapters provide a unique context for the sustained analysis of Lacan's texts which begins in the third chapter, an analysis that forms the bulk of the book's content. This contextualization potentially widens the book's appeal to any scholar wishing to explore his relationship to those textual objects he interacts with on a daily basis. And because this book assumes the reader has little to no familiarity with Lacan, the reader will find patient explanations of the basics of his theories before slowly being led up to the more difficult theories of his late years. Again the argument is that Lacan has something to offer all scholars. His work is not just reserved for psychoanalysts. . . . . . It is with his late theories that the serious student of Lacan will find the book's most original contribution. For in the fourth chapter a detailed account is provided of how Lacan derived his infamous formulae of sexuation from Aristotelian logic. These formulae are then extensively discussed against the backdrop of interpretive theory and textual analysis, showing how these formulae capture much more than just the difference between the sexes. Strikingly, this difference is also found to run through meaning itself, something the final chapter aims to demonstrate. It does this by amalgamating three key components of late-Lacan: sexuation, discourse theory and his use of topological spaces. This amalgamation is a first in the literature. But this amalgamation is not just useful in demonstrating the book's thesis. It further suggests how seemingly divergent aspects of late-Lacanian theory can be made to work together.

Una de las principales finalidades de la arquitectura radica en la búsqueda de un LUGAR donde el ser humano
pueda habitar.
Lugar como centro y trasfondo donde discurre la vida, donde ser. Así, surge el cuestionamiento acerca de la
significación y la importancia de la noción de lugar y su relación con la arquitectura, que se presenta a través
de un diálogo entre diversos autores de diferentes disciplinas como la filosofía, la antropología, la literatura y la
arquitectura.
Lugares que se podrían definir como envolvencias donde confluye lo que envuelve y lo envuelto, donde el ser
humano es el centro, abiertos a recibir, cuyos límites permanecen en equilibrio en una relación profunda con
su genius loci, caracterizados por una singular identidad que los hacen únicos e inexplicablemente maravillosos.
Lugar y arquitectura que se anudan en distintos conceptos, siendo capaces de cobijar la coexistencia del
tiempo asentado en espacio, adquiriendo una permanencia que consigue otorgar reposo a lo pasajero, donde el
ser humano tiene la posibilidad de habitar el presente dotándolo de una identidad que lo convierten en único y
especial, rozando la totalidad, cuya resonancia traspasa los límites físicos impregnado el cuerpo y el alma, la
percepción y la memoria.

In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three different perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the lived comprehensiveness of place and place experience. I suggest that these holistic, dialectical, and generative perspectives provide a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.

NOTE: The ideas and examples in this article are now much more fully developed in David Seamon, LIFE TAKES PLACE: PHENOMENOLOGY, LIFEWORLDS, AND PLACEMAKING (London: Routledge, 2018). The most important shift is the author's realizing that genius loci is part of a broader phenomenon that he identifies as "common presence"--"the material and lived 'togetherness' of a place impelled by both its physical and experiential qualities" (Seamon 2018, p. 87). I would ask readers of thIs article to complement their understanding by studying LIFE TAKES PLACE.

ABSTRACT OF ORIGINAL ARTICLE: As recent phenomenological studies have demonstrated (Casey 1997, 2009; Malpas 1999, 2006; Mugerauer 2008; Stefanovic 2000), the phenomenon of place is a multivalent structure sophisticated and complex in its existential constitution. In this chapter, I offer one phenomenological vantage point from which to examine this lived complexity. I contend that, as an integral structure of human life, place can be understood in terms of three dimensions: first, the geographical ensemble—i.e., the material environment, including both its natural and human-made dimensions; second, people-in-place, including individual and group actions, intentions, and meanings; and, third, spirit of place, or genius loci.

Drawing on the conceptual approach of “systematics” developed by the British philosopher J. G. Bennett, I argue that these three dimensions can engage in six different ways, each of which relates to one particular lived mode whereby place contributes to human life. These six modes are: (1) place interaction; (2) place identity; (3) place creation; (4) place intensification; (5) place realization; and (6) place release.

I argue that place identity is important for understanding the nature of place but is complemented by other modes of relationship that together help clarify the complexity and richness of place and place experience.

In this chapter, I consider place, place experience, and place attachment as they might be understood phenomenologically from three perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the lived comprehensiveness of place and place experience. I suggest that each of these three perspectives offers a range of useful ways for thinking about and understanding place attachment.

REFERENCE:: David Seamon, Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body and Place: Toward a Phenomenology of Human Situatedness, a chapter in T. Hünefeldt and A. Schlitte (eds.), Situatedness and Place (pp. 41-66). Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018.

ABSTRACT: In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of perception and corporeal sensibility to consider the significance of human situatedness as expressed via place and place experience. To illustrate how Merleau-Ponty's conceptual understanding might be applied to real-world place experiences, I draw on two sources of experiential evidence, the first of which is a passage from Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's magical-realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967/1970). The second source is a set of first-person observations describing events and situations that I happened to take note of during weekday walks between my home and university office over the course of several months. My aim is to use these two narrative accounts as a means to illustrate, via vignettes of everyday human experience, Merleau-Ponty's central concepts of perception, body-subject, and lived embodiment. I contend that these accounts substantiate Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological claims and point to additional significant elements of human situatedness and place experience.

A Portuguese translation of this chapter by Andre Pinto is available here at academia.edu at:

https://www.academia.edu/42134992/Merleau-Ponty_Lived_Body_and_Place_Toward_a_Phenomenology_of_Human_Situatedness_-_Tradu%C3%A7%C3%A3o_em_Portugu%C3%AAs_do_Artigo_de_David_Seamon_2018_

Since the time of European exploration of Australia, the topography of the continent has been mapped from a colonial cartographic perspective. Colonial government guidelines have ‘controlled’ the knowledge base of understanding of the
landscape for non-Indigenous Australians. This perspective has lead to a coloniallytainted sense of place for non-Indigenous (and some Indigenous) Australians. Such Euro-centric focused governance and management of the development of Australia
understanding of the landscape was strongly exemplified during a recent six-month review of State forest names in Victoria.
By the beginning of 2004 over 90 percent of State forests in Victoria did not have officially registered names in the Australian Gazetteer. Thus, the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) employed the researchers to undertake a pilot study program, investigating different methods for officially naming the State forests in the Midlands Region of Victoria. The authors were assisted in this process by a steering committee which had representatives from DSE, Aboriginal Affairs Victoria (AAV) and the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL). This pilot study program focussed on producing a best practice model for naming State forest areas, which would
then be utilised for all State forests across Victoria.
It was understood by the researchers that place names were markers of national, regional, local and personal identity, and as such, part of the State forest review concentrated on recognising all the various historical and contemporary identities apparent in the Midlands region. This attempt at recognising historical and contemporary associations with the State forest areas proved to be a challenge. Difficulties arose in multiple areas of the review process. It is important to take a moment to reflect upon the
processes of place naming, before discussion of the current project can begin. We must ask, ‘why do we name?’ and ‘how do we name?’ before we can understand what the problems encountered with naming and changing names are.

"ABSTRACT:
    This study assumes the subject's pursuit of meaning is generally incapacitating and should be suspended. It aims to demonstrate how such a suspension is theoretically accomplished by utilizing Lacan's formulae of sexuation integrated with his work in discourse theory and topology.
    Part I places this study into context by examining scholarship from the established fields of hermeneutics, phenomenology, (post)structuralism, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis in order to extract out their respective theory of meaning. These theories reveal that an historical struggle with meaning has been underway since the Reformation and reaches near crisis proportions in the 20th century. On the one hand this crisis is mollified by the rise of Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneutical phenomenology which questions traditional epistemological approaches to the text using a new ontological conceptualization of meaning and a conscious rejection of methodology. On the other hand this crisis is exacerbated when the ubiquitous nature of meaning is itself challenged by (post)structuralism's discovery of the signifier which inscribes a limit to meaning, and by the domains of sense and nonsense newly opened up by aesthetic theory. These historical developments culminate in the field of psychoanalysis which most consequentially delimits a cause of meaning said to be closely linked to the core of subjectivity.
    Part II extends these findings by rigorously constructing out of the Lacanian sexuated formulae a decidedly non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach useful in demonstrating the sexual nature of meaning. Explicated in their static state by way of an account of their original derivation from the Aristotelian logical square, it is argued that these four formulae are relevant to basic concerns of textual theory inclusive of the hermeneutical circle of meaning. These formulae are then set into motion by integrating them with Lacan's four discourses to demonstrate the breakdown of meaning. Finally, the cuts and sutures of two-dimensional space that is topology as set down in L'étourdit are performed to confirm how the very field of meaning is ultimately suspended from a nonsensical singular point known in Lacanian psychoanalysis as objet a. The contention is that by occupying this point the subject frees himself from the debilitating grip of meaning."