Placeless Geography

When space (abstract, constant, longitude and latitude) is filled with cultural meanings, places (cultural, varied, relative) emerge. But when landscapes are not used by people who live in them and share their fate, 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:
· e.g., Greek civilization and Roman empire
· large empires, technological societies create look-alike landscapes
· dominance, planning, and design create flatscapes as in contemporary U.S. society

Placelessness occurs simultaneously in all places. Even as places have meaning to one group, they are are at the same time meaningless to other groups. For example, the "cold, heartless" placelessness of downtowns are home to the homeless, whose knowledge and attachment to these places allows them to survive -- to find food, money, shelter, safety, friends, etc. Another example, for urbanites rural Wisconsin might all look alike -- a kind of placelessness -- but for the Amish, the rolling hills of pasture, hay, and corn fields and their large vegetable gardens and woodlots are their intimate home.

Buildings that are "something" (historically, architecturally distinctive) are being replaced by "nothing," e.g., suburban homes, office parks, new hotels, and malls

Placeless landscapes are better called the common 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 high 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, 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 new uncommon landscapes of the late-auto era, nevertheless, reflect the principles, laws, and customs of the countries in which they are located.

New cultural landscapes are always being created. The question is really is:
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:

  • styleless, sweetly sentimental objects
  • the significant is made trivial; trivial is made significance
  • e.g., historical events and people are translated into objects
  • e.g., places are consumed like commodities

    • components of placeless geography:
    1) different localities are created both to look and to feel alike
    2) distinctive places are experienced only through superficial and stereotyped images

    1) other-directedness in places

  • tourist landscapes
  • entertainment districts
  • commercial strips
  • malls, especially mega-malls
  • Disneyfied places, including fast-food restaurants with playgrounds
  • museumised places

    • 2) uniformity, standardization, and increasing scale in places

  • instant new towns and suburbs
  • industrial and office developments, especially Edge Cities
  • interstate highways and airports
  • international styles in design and architecture
  • gigantism -- skyscrapers, megalopolises
  • the larger the scale, the smaller will be the number of people who will act loving towards the world.

    3) place destruction

  • wars -- bombs create placelessness: the destruction of unique places and their people
  • excavation -- open pit mines, quarries -- destroy natural places
  • urban renewal in inner cities
    • replace human-scale places with local meanings and memories

    Common Explanations for Placelessness:

    · mass impersonal societies

    lack social and cultural contexts

    · mass communication & consumption

    mass tastes

    · multinational corporations

    profit motivation

    · standardization of products & services

    mass production, technique -- air travel reduces place to space. And like gigantic buildings, airports destroy places and become no-places.

    · centralized national states

    universal scientific laws, central governmental agencies

    · homogenous economic systems, e.g., capitalism & communism

    For example, the former World Trade Center had no reference to landscape because world trade, as now practiced, has none. World trade now exists to exploit indifferently the landscapes and peoples of the world and to concentrate and distribute the profits to the world's wealthiest people.

    · personal attitudes

    technique and kitsch

    Responses to placesslessness: individualistic and collective alienating forces of powerlessness and dehumanization, especially in post-industrial societies

    Four behavioral strategies with landscape manifestations:

    1) fantasy

    amusement parks (Disneyland, Las Vegas)

    2) flight

    suburbs, exurbia, retirement and gated communities

    3) withdrawal

    communes, drug culture (alcohol and other drugs), TV, video games, movies

    4) resistance

    political action groups, liberation movements -- peaceful and violent

    Optional: read Paul Chatterton and Robert Holland's Urban Nightscapes. London: Routledge, 2003.