The “Sense of Place” Snob

May 1, 2014 by Taylor Studios in Other

…is a combination of characteristics that makes a place special and unique. Sense of place involves the human experience in a landscape, the local knowledge and folklore. Sense of place also grows from identifying oneself in relation to a particular piece of land on the surface of planet Earth.

I was standing in Cambridge, Maryland looking out onto the Chesapeake Bay. I had just finished reading a Harriet Tubman interpretive wayside when a gentleman struck up a conversation. It took only a few minutes before I learned that he resided about half his life in east coast ocean front homes; the other half of his life he resided in homes throughout Colorado. He was a self-described “ocean and mountain guy through and through.” He was happy to have the opportunities to live in both locations, for it would have been “painful to have to choose between the two.”

He described both oceanfront and mountainous areas quite poetically. I realized he was doing a good job conveying the sense of place he felt.

Perhaps fearing that I was going to walk away and get on with my day, he asked where I was from. I replied Illinois. He said, “I don’t know how you do it…out there in the middle of the country…no ocean…no mountain…just, um, flatness.”

Well, he was correct. There are no oceans or mountains in my hometown of Chicago. Our conversation that day caused me to reflect upon what I valued about my hometown. It also had me pondering whether sense of place could be ranked qualitatively. If he politely granted me the opportunity to share the sense of place I feel for Chicago, would he have smirked, replying, “My sense of place is way better than yours. Your sense is built-up, urban. My sense is bucolic, natural.” Would he have exposed a sense of place snobbery?

Perhaps there exists an unwritten sense of place hierarchy. I don’t know.

I do know that the most memorable moments of my childhood (nearly every weekend and many weekdays of the summer months from age 1 to 13) were spent on Lake Michigan’s beaches. To this day, you could blindfold me, spin me 360 degrees, and I could point towards the lake. I can sense the humidity, wind direction, and scent of the lake from more than a mile away. You can put me on the beach and I can tell the time by the shadows cast by the high-rise condos that back each of Chicago’s north side beaches. On these beaches, I grew up. No mountains. No jellyfish. Just me and my family. And I wouldn’t trade my sense of place for any mountainous vista.

Effective exhibit design is often asked to generate a sense of place in all visitors, even those whose minds may be closed to it…like my friend at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway.

I’m inclined to believe that the average American still associates a sense of place not so much with architecture or a monument or a designed space as with some event, some daily, weekly, or seasonal occurrence which we look forward to or remember and which we share with others, and as a result of the event becomes more significant than the place itself.

–J.B. Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time