Week 2 Interpreting P lace and L andscape

1. Week 2 Interpreting Place and Landscape Geog 100 Genevieve Depelteau

2. Revision 1. From a cultural geographical perspective, a cemetery is _________. • An example of a Dreamtime landscape • A derelict landscape • An example of Proxemics • A sublime space • A sacred space

3. Revision 2. To a geographer, places matter because? • Places are unique and at the same time interdependent. • Places are the setting for people's daily lives. • Places have meaning for people. • All of the above • None of the above Interdependent? Places and regions are interdependent, each filling specialized roles. The concept of scale is here important – global, international, national, regional, local. Global influence local, and vice et versa

4. Revision 3. Which of the following statements is true? • The word geography means "mapmaking.” • Geography and cartography are essentially European inventions of the Renaissance period. • The First Law of Geography is that no two places are alike. • Geography is all about maps and mapmaking. • Human geography is about recognizing and understanding the interdependence among places and regions. • All of the above First law of geography? “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than are distant things”

5. Revision 4. Identify the cluster of words that would be useful in a definition of the concept of cognitive space. • Sites and situations; measures of time, cost, and profit; distribution patterns. • Coordinates, absolute distance, space as a container. • Connectivity, point locations, non-linear space. • Scale, distance, spatial diffusion. • Values, feelings, beliefs, perceptions, behavioural space. • Cognitive Space is defined and measured in terms of the nature and degree of people’s values, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions about locations, districts, and regions • Sitting at the same place • Not walking through a certain neighborhood • Feeling homesick

6. Psycho Geography - Cognitive images -Kevin Lynch p.269 Using three disparate cities as examples (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles), Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five elements: • paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel; • edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and shorelines; • districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character; • nodes, focal points, intersections or loci; • landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as external reference points. but he was also interested in the way people experienced their landscape and soaked up their city. Lynch wanted to know how people sense their city and how they use that sense to go about their lives within it.

7. Cultural Geography Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms and their variations across and relations to spaces and places, and landscape. E.g. Westernization or other similar processes such as modernization, americanization, islamization and others

8. Cultural Geography

9. Landscape ? Some people might think of landscape as a beautiful image of the countryside or other landscape of nature painted or real Other might think of landscape as something that is man made such as the design of parks and gardens

10. Landscape ? In geography landscape represents the product of our actions like multiple layers. It represents the material, but also the dream and ideas of both the ordinary people and the more powerful. Just like space and place, our understanding of a landscape can influence our behavior, and a landscape can be the result of our behavior

11. Just like a cake! 1. Cultural landscape 2. Vernacular landscape 3. Landscape of power 4. Symbolic Landscape 5. Derelict Landscape

12. Cultural Geography and Carl O.Sauer Cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early Twentieth century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop Sauer saw that cultures and societies both developed out of their landscape, but also shaped them too

13. 1. Cultural Landscape “The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result" A landscape is not only a natural landscape Activities of humans in specific natural environment result in the alteration of the latter and of a cultural landscape

14. Cultural Landscape “a set of ideas and practices, embedded in a place.

15. “e.g. the rice culture” in China The cultivation of rice led to the development of an economic lifecycle centered around agriculture: ploughing in spring, weeding in summer, harvesting in autumn, and hoarding in winter.

16. Ex. aesthetic of garden p.260-61French Garden • Scientific revolution during 15-16th century brought the idea that human was superior to nature, able to control nature • This reality was translated first in the Italian garden, and even more in the French Garden style • Ex. Jardin de Versailles – Peace and harmony

17. 2.Vernacular (or ordinary landscape) • A Vernacular Landscape is a cultural landscape that evolved through use by the people whose activities or occupancy shaped that landscape. • Through social or cultural attitudes of an individual, family or a community, the landscape reflects the physical, biological, and cultural character of those everyday lives • “does not mean that these landscapes are simplistic or do not carry any messages”

18. Vernacular (or ordinary landscape) • Example: Suburbia • American landscape • We expect them/are common in our environment • Present in popular culture: movie, tv shows • But complex message of consumption and wealth

19. 3.Symbolic Landscape • Ex: Lincoln memorial – democratic tradition in classical Greek and Roman architecture • Representation of certain values or aspirations that the builders or financiers of those landscapes want to impart to a larger public • an instrument of cultural force, a central tool in the creation of national and social identities.

20. Landscape of power • Landscape that holds power and/or money

21. Derelict landscape • Landscape that have experienced abandonment, misuse, disinvestment, or vandalism

22. Images and behaviour • Cognitive images • People’s image of place • Topophilia use to orient ourselves and navigate • Shapes particular aspect of our behaviour e.g. shopping behaviour influenced by cities’ light and pedestrian way, as well as values and feelings “love of place”

23. Place Marketing • Increased globalization: seeking more tourists, business…image is important • Cities need to be competitive, use culture and popular culture, but also “place making”, “sense of place” and “topophilia” – festivals, parks, facilities, sport event, etc. • That are more and more global • Ex. Jazz festival – 2.5 million people every year

24. But not only cities.. • Ex. Olympic Peninsula in Washington with Twilights • 40,000 people

25. Place marketingin a global context • Tendency for landscape and place site to be reproduced • Heritage site in Las Vegas • Urban planning: highways, gated communities, suburbs, shopping centers in China and Dubai

26. New space: cyber space • Shift in spatial and social interaction • Globalization of culture • Own landscape: design • Control access of the internet: example facebook banned in many countries

27. List of 5 cities you would like to live in Canada?