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Placeless
Geography When space (abstract, constant, longitude and latitude) is filled with cultural meanings, places (cultural, varied, relative) emerge. But if landscapes that lack cultural diversity and are impersonal (nobody identifies with them), placelessness results, creating "thin" places and/or turns "thick" places into thinner ones. Placeless geography, placelessness, flatscapes, thin places -- they all lack or have reduced diversity, significance, and a sense of place for people. Placelessness dehumanizes the world and because dehumanized places have less or no human attachments, the people in these placeless places become even more vulnerable to more dehumanization. Geographical uniformity is not new: Placelessness occurs simultaneously in all places.
Even as places have meaning to one group, they are at the same time
meaningless to other groups. Buildings that are "something" (historically, architecturally distinctive) are being replaced by "nothing," e.g., suburban homes, office parks, new hotels, and malls
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Placeless landscapes are better called the
common and uncommon landscapes of the post-World War II era.
Prior to the industrialization of the U.S. and Canadian
economies, agrarian communities
were largely ethnically and religiously
identified. Utopian communities were also scattered throughout the
settled countryside. These common landscapes became increasing uncommon,
or relic, landscapes as industrial and auto landscapes emerged. Starting
in the 1920s and particularly after World War II, auto landscapes had become the new
common landscape types. Not coincidentally, at the height of the suburbanization
in the two northern countries of North America, the concept of
placelessness and critiques of suburbia appeared. With
de-industrialization and growth of the service sectors in Canada and the
United States, personal consumption and entertainment resulted in new
uncommon landscapes, called post-modern, but this time fabricated
placeless versions of past common landscapes. Although uncommon landscapes,
whether historically authentic or contemporary fabricated ones, are fewer in
number and less obvious in everyday life than common landscapes, the newest
uncommon landscapes of the late-auto era, nevertheless, reflect the principles,
laws, and customs of Canada and the United States. Mexico essentially has no
post-modern landscapes. |
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| New cultural landscapes are always being created.
The real questions are only: 1) who creates them? 2) for what purposes? 3) what do we keep of the old? and 4) how do we interpret past landscapes? kitsch: components of placeless geography: 1) other-directedness in places 2) uniformity, standardization, and increasing scale in places 3) place destruction Common Explanations for Placelessness:
Responses to placesslessness: individualistic and collective alienating forces of powerlessness and dehumanization, especially in post-industrial societies Four behavioral strategies with landscape manifestations:
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