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Most broadly, sense of place relates to the cus-

Sense of place tomary ways in which a place makes itself felt – its
specific manner of being as perceived, encoun-
David Seamon tered, known, and remembered by the human
Kansas State University, USA beings engaging with that place (Walter 1988).
Explications of sense of place regularly focus on
Introduction an elusive environmental, spatial, and landscape
presence difficult to locate or describe precisely.
In terms of its significance for human life, place British novelist Lawrence Durrell (1969, 157)
can be defined as any environmental locus that, characterized genius loci as “the invisible constant
in time and space, draws together individual in a place,” and eminent American landscape
or group actions, experiences, intentions, and writer J.B. Jackson (1994, 158) spoke of “certain
meanings (Relph 1976). One significant dimen- localities [that] have an attraction which gives
sion of a place is its environmental ambience, us a certain indefinable sense of well-being and
often described as sense of place and defined as which we want to return to, time and again.”
the specific character, atmosphere, and expres-
sive energy of a particular environment or
Sense of place over time
locale – for example, the West-Endness of Lon-
don’s West End, the Tokyo-ness of Tokyo, the
Catalonia-ness of Catalonia, or the Jamaica-ness As a phenomenon in human life, sense of place
of Jamaica. Though allied to sensory, percep- has a millennia-old history, beginning with
❦ ❦
tual, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of archaic peoples who experienced specific places
human experience, sense of place cannot be as receptacles of expressive energy envisioned as
fully described or understood by these experi- gods, spirits, or other ineffable but engageable
ential dimensions alone. Sense of place is greater presences. Locales associated with rocks, trees,
than its environmental and spatial parts and can forests, hills, lakes, springs, rivers, islands, moun-
evoke both positive and negative qualities – for tains, and other features of the natural landscape
example, a sense of serenity, pleasure, pride, or were often understood to house independent,
vitality, on one hand; or, on the other hand, generative energies having an integral connect-
a sense of unsettledness, discomfort, fear, or edness to the human life encountering those
sterility. Some environments project little or no places. Altars might be constructed for rituals
sense of place. Geographer Edward Relph spoke to propitiate these spirits of place, or a building
of placelessness – the worldwide destruction of might be erected to provide a dwelling place for
unique places replaced by standardized environ- the god or goddess who the spirit was identified
ments; anthropologist Marc Augé referred to to be. As exemplified by Australia’s Uluru, Eng-
nonplaces – anonymous spaces of transition such land’s Stonehenge, Ireland’s holy wells, or the
as airports and motorways. island site of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, many

The International Encyclopedia of Geography.

Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg2116

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SENSE OF PLACE

of these locales were accepted as special sacred agriculture and rural ways of life. Poets like John
places where these energies were particularly Clare and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and artists
powerful and able to provoke a deeper spiritual like John Constable and J.M.W. Turner aimed
engagement between human beings and the for a new aesthetic appreciation of natural and
sacred realm. The phenomenologist of religion human-made places as they incorporated less
Mircea Eliade identified such places as poten- visible, atmospheric qualities like sense of place.
tially invoking hierophany – a sacred revelation One early example is essayist and poet Alexander
engendered by the site. Pope’s efforts to promote a picturesque and
The ancient Greeks and Romans spoke of pastoral ideal drawn partly from earlier Classical
Genius, a guardian spirit that accompanied each writers. In his 1731 poem, “Epistle IV, To
human being from birth. They also associ- Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington,” Pope (1731)
ated Genius with particular places; this genius highlighted the crucial importance of the garden
loci – literally, the spirit or guardian energy of the designer’s attention to a landscape’s genius loci and
place – animated and protected the unique unity sense of place: “To build, to plant, whatever you
and continuity of that place (Walter 1988). For intend, … / … treat the goddess like a modest
the Romans, genius loci played a central role in fair . . . . / Consult the genius of the place in all”
their understanding of the everyday world. For (lines 57–60).
example, they envisioned the Roman household Though he did not directly use the phrasings
as a sacred, local habitation of human and divine genius loci and sense of place, Romantic poet
beings. The heart of the Roman house was the William Wordsworth perhaps most comprehen-
❦ hearth, the center of worship and associated sively explicated how a steady, intense attention ❦
with Vesta, the goddess of the sacred fire. Behind to particular places, especially natural places,
the hearth was a storage area built to house the could bring experiencers to a mode of height-
Penates, spirits who protected the family’s food ened encounter different from everyday aware-
and possessions. Another important place in the ness. In his 1798 poem, “Tintern Abbey,” for
Roman household was the doorway, which hon- example, Wordsworth (1798) described his sec-
ored Janus, the god of transitions who oversaw ond walking visit to Wales’ Wye Valley and pic-
all comings and goings. Beyond the household, tured its alluring spirit of place: “ … I have felt /
Romans assumed that each place was associated A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of ele-
with a particular spirit marking the eminence of vated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something
that place. Though the Romans dominated con- far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is
quered peoples and confiscated their property, the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean
they respected the genius loci of these occupied and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the
places and regularly erected votive tablets to the mind of man: / A motion and spirit, that impels
spirit of the place. At Scotland’s Antonine Wall, / All thinking things, all objects of thought, /
for example, a Roman stone altar reads, “Genio And rolls through all things” (lines 93–102).
Terrae Britannicae” – “to the spirit of the British In the later twentieth century, one of the
land” (Walter 1988, 15). most thorough efforts to understand genius loci
In the English-speaking world, genius loci and sense of place was the work of Norwegian
and sense of place grew in significance in architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz,
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as who argued that its lived foundation is the
industrialization and urbanization supplanted natural landscape, which is not a “mere

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flux of phenomena” but has “structure and identifying and articulating less visible features
embodies meanings” (Norberg-Schulz 1980, that makes an environment unique and confers
23). Norberg-Schulz identified four types of on that environment a specific place ambience
natural landscapes and corresponding genius and character, often unnoticed and typically
loci: the romantic landscape, an environment of not brought forward to conscious awareness. In
change, variety, and detail, best exemplified by relation to sense of place, one finds that place
the forests of Scandinavia; the cosmic landscape, atmospheres are nebulous, mutable, and can
an environment of expanse and monotony, never be fully grasped or described. They cannot
best represented by the desert and illustrated be identified by vision alone but incorporate a
by the Sudanese city of Khartoum; the classical wide range of lived qualities that include sound,
landscape, an environment balancing variety smell, tactility, emotional vibrations, and an
and continuity, best exemplified by the Greek active, indeterminant presence of things, spaces,
landscape; and the complex landscape, a blend of and environmental qualities.
the first three and ultimately best representing As a conceptual means to identify these evasive
most actual places, which generally are never atmospheric qualities more precisely, geographer
pure but mixed in their natural expression. In David Seamon (2018) proposed that place and
the complex landscape of the French campagne, place experience might be understood via the
for example, Norberg-Schulz contended that relationships among three components: envi-
cosmic, romantic, and classical qualities meet, ronmental ensemble, people-in-place, and common
while in Naples, classical spaces intersect the presence. The environmental ensemble refers
romantic atmosphere of the sea. He pointed out to the material and environmental qualities of
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that the combinations of these landscape types place; although any specific place’s environ-
are legion and “determine a corresponding mul- mental ensemble is singular, it is an integral
titude of existential meanings” (Norberg-Schulz contributor to atmosphere and sense of place
1980, 47). Though Norberg-Schulz’s typology because the environmental ensemble is the
is prejudiced toward Western places and ignores material ground for place experiences and place
many of the earth’s other landscapes (e.g., trop- events. In turn, people-in-place relates to the
ical environments), his work is one noteworthy human worlds associated with a particular envi-
example of how a phenomenology of genius loci ronmental ensemble and includes individual and
and sense of place might proceed. group actions, meanings, and situations related
to that place, whether habitual and typical or
purposely planned and out of the ordinary.
Sense of place as atmosphere Seamon contended that, overarching both envi-
ronmental ensemble and people-and-place is the
Most recently, genius loci and sense of place have less visible component of common presence, which
been conceptualized via a phenomenology of he defined as the material and lived togetherness
atmosphere, developed particularly by European of a place impelled by both its physical and
philosophers Hermann Schmitz, Gernot Böhme, human qualities. Seamon argued that the relative
and Tonino Griffero (Griffero and Tedeschini togetherness of entities in space sustains an
2019). For understanding sense of place, the con- environmental common presence that emerges
cept of atmosphere is useful because it provides as a sensible quality shared by the entities that are
one conceptual and experiential framework for a part of that space (Seamon 2018, 88). In this

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SENSE OF PLACE

sense, common presence relates to the ways that traditions, the first of which is phenomenological
the spatial togetherness, associated with both its studies, already highlighted in the discussion
environmental and human components, con- above. A second significant body of work is
tributes to what a real-world place is, including empiricist-analytic research, mostly associated with
less comprehendible and accessible aspects like environmental psychologists who examine sense
atmosphere and sense of place. of place via measurable criteria drawn from
To clarify the lived subtlety of sense of place interviews, questionnaires, and observational
is one task of phenomenological research. One studies (Manzo and Divine-Wright 2021).
helpful clarification is provided by Edward Relph Much of this research is phrased in terms of place
(2009), who offered a useful definitional clari- attachment and place identity; the aim is to correlate
fication between genius loci (he called it spirit of respondents’ degree of place involvement with
place) and sense of place. Relph defined the former independent variables like social status, home
as the singular qualities of a particular landscape ownership, community ties, or sense of security.
or environment that infuse it with a unique For example, one major research finding is
ambience and character; the latter, in contrast, that the relative strength of respondents’ place
is the synaesthetic and largely unself-conscious attachment and sense of place is associated with
facility of human beings to recognize, feel, and length of residence in that place.
sense the uniqueness of a particular landscape or A third significant body of work is social
environment – in other words, its genius loci. On constructionist research, which argues that every
one hand, sense of place refers to a sensibility that human attribution of sense of place is a social
radiates from the experiencer toward the place and cultural construction of reality (Cresswell
❦ and thereby incorporates the more subjective ❦
2014). Places themselves are said to be devoid of
dimension of a place’s ambience and character.
any intrinsic atmospheric or ambient qualities;
On the other hand, genius loci is a lived quality
rather, different groups and different historical
that radiates from the physical environment
periods construct different, often conflicting,
toward the experiencer and incorporates more
understandings of the same place’s meanings.
physical, observable, objective environmental
One example is geographer Argyro Loukaki’s
qualities. Existentially, a strong genius loci typically
study of competing understandings of the genius
evokes a strong sense of place, but the inverse is
loci of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece (Loukaki
potentially less so (though it might happen that,
1997). Drawing on shifting twentieth-century
if an individual or group is concerned about a
weak genius loci, they may work to strengthen it design schemes as to how the Acropolis site
or move to an environment where genius loci is should be landscaped and its spirit of place
more to their liking). A central point that Relph protected, Loukaki demonstrated how “contes-
emphasized is that many human beings, but not tations over the essential and authentic character
all, have an instinctive sense for genius loci and, of places mask vital issues of who, exactly has the
existentially, gravitate toward it. power and privilege to define standards of judg-
ment for the understanding and transformation
of a particular place … ” (Loukaki 1997, 310).
Current research on sense of place Significantly, each of these three research tra-
ditions understands and interprets sense of place
In the early 2020s, research on sense of in contrasting ways. The phenomenological per-
place incorporates three contrasting conceptual spective assumes that sense of place is an actual,

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S E NS E OF P LACE

intrinsic phenomenon embedded in physical mixed-use neighborhoods that might stimulate

places and contactable via human experience. environmental liveliness and a robust sense of
Like phenomenologists, empiricist-analytic place. A third example is architect Christopher
researchers accept the possibility of sense of place Alexander’s efforts to develop a pattern language,
but interpret it largely as subjective knowledge a design tool that provides architects and clients
that can be elicited, objectified, and explained with an environmental and place language that
through experiencers’ descriptions and back- helps to identify designable elements that might
ground characteristics like length of involvement contribute to and invigorate sense of place.
with place. Yet again, social constructionists The patterns developed by Alexander are both
assume that all human meaning is arbitrarily interpretive and prescriptive: first, they are
fabricated and that the world-in-itself, including descriptions of specific environmental and place
sense of place, has no intrinsic meaning but is elements that contribute to a sense of place – for
humanly constructed via imposed social and cul- example, identifiable neighborhood, degrees of
tural interpretations that could be otherwise. All publicness, or main gateways. Second, patterns
three conceptual perspectives have their strengths are sets of practical instructions suggesting how to
and weaknesses; it is important for researchers to design the element effectively – in regard to main
recognize the significant conceptual differences gateways, for example, one is to directed to mark
and to realize that each approach illuminates urban boundaries that have important human
sense of place in contrasting ways that are all a meaning with conspicuous gateway structures.
part of what it is comprehensively. All these design efforts are indebted at least
❦ There is a growing design, planning, and policy in part to urbanist Jane Jacobs’ 1961 Death and ❦
literature that asks if sense of place can be fabri- Life of Great American Cities, a seminal work that
cated intentionally (Seamon 2018). Obviously, a demonstrated how an urban sense of place is
powerful sense of place cannot be manufactured founded on such physical, designable elements
directly, but architects, landscape architects, as short blocks, contrasting building types, and
urban designers, and community planners can essential primary functions to which users must
all contribute to shaping and enhancing designs, necessarily go – for example, residences and
plans, and policies through empathetic efforts workplaces. Jacobs contended that the primary
that respect a specific place and carefully think engine of a vigorous urban sense of place is
through and envision ways whereby that place diversity – an intricate, close-grained mélange of
might be invigorated, including its genius loci uses, activities, and environmental elements that
and sense of place. A first example is archi- mutually support each other spatially, econom-
tectural theorist Bill Hillier’s theory of space ically, and socially. The result is what she called
syntax, which demonstrates conclusively that the street ballet – an exuberance of functional
the degree of life and human interactions in a diversity, sidewalk life, and urban sense of place
place is directly related to that place’s pathway sustained by the regular comings and goings of
structure, which plays a pivotal role in whether many people carrying out their own everyday
users informally come together face-to-face or needs, responsibilities, and activities. Out of
remain apart. A second example is the work these independent, individual events arises a
of New Urbanists like architects Andrés Duany more encompassing, synergistic structure of
and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who use physi- animated urban place with a distinctive rhythm,
cal design as a catalyst for creating, walkable, ambience, and vibrant sense of place.

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wbieg0763
wbieg0881
SEE ALSO: Affect; Everyday geographies; Manzo, L.C. and P. Devine-Wright, eds. 2021.
wbieg1169 GeoHumanities; Humanistic geography; Place Attachment: Advances in Theory, Methods and
wbieg0412
wbieg0107 Identity; Landscape; Literary geography; Research, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
wbieg0794
Phenomenology; Place Norberg-Schulz, C. 1980. Genius Loci: Towards a Phe-
wbieg0312
wbieg1098
nomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
wbieg0441 Pope, A. 1731. “Epistle to Lord Burlington.”
Reprinted in Pope: Poetical Works, edited by H.
References
Davis, 314–321. London: Oxford University Press.
Relph, E. 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Cresswell, T. 2014. Place: A History. Oxford: Relph, E. 2009. “A Pragmatic Sense of Place.”
Wiley-Blackwell. Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, 20(3):
Durrell, L. 1969. “Landscape and Character.” In Spirit 24–31.
of Place, edited by A.G. Thomas, 159–163). New Seamon, D. 2018. Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Life-
York: Dutton. worlds, and Place Making, London: Routledge.
Griffero, T., and M. Tedeschini, eds. 2019. Atmosphere Walter, E.V. 1988. Placeways: A Theory of the Human
and Aesthetics, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Environment. Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
Jackson, J.B. 1994. A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time. olina Press.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wordsworth, W. 1798. “Tintern Abbey.” Reprinted
Loukaki, A. 1997. “Whose Genius Loci?: Contrasting in The Poetic Works of William Wordsworth, edited by
Interpretations of the Sacred Rock of the Athe- T. Hutchison, 163–165. London: Oxford Univer-
nian Acropolis.” Annals of the Association of American sity Press.
Geographers, 87(2): 306–329.
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ABSTRACT
Sense of place is closely related to genius loci (spirit of place) and can be defined as the specific character and
expressive energy of a particular environment or locale. Though allied to sensory, perceptual, emotional,
and cognitive dimensions of human experience, sense of place cannot be fully described by these experi-
ential dimensions alone. Sense of place is greater than its environmental parts and can evoke both positive
and negative qualities. As a phenomenon in human life, sense of place has a millennia-old history, begin-
ning with archaic peoples who experienced specific places as receptacles of expressive energy envisioned as
gods, spirits, or other ineffable presences. In the English-speaking world, sense of place and genius loci first
❦ became significant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as industrialization and urbanization sup- ❦
planted agriculture and rural ways of life. Most recently, sense of place and genius loci have been interpreted
via the concept of atmosphere, which provides one means for identifying and articulating the less visible
features that confer on an environment a specific sense of place and genius loci. In the early 2020s, research
on sense of place incorporates three contrasting conceptual traditions: first, phenomenological research;
second, empiricist-analytic research; and, third, social constructionist research.

KEYWORDS
environmental experience; genius loci; humanistic geography; phenomenology; phenomenology of place;
place; sense of place; spirit of place