Kim Dovey Becoming Places Summary

Globals, Locals, and Mobals: In the book “The Power of Place,” Harm de Blij introduces a new viewpoint of geography. Geography is much more than the terrain and physical makeup of the world. It is the culture, education, conditions, foods, politics, language, and opportunities. These things make people and places unique, and capture the true meaning of Human Geography.

Place makes memories cohere in complex ways. People’s experiences of the urban landscape intertwine the sense of place and the politics of space,” writes architectural historian Dolores Hayden. Hayden’s work is concerned with how some identities are hidden when we represent or talk about place through certain narratives, or fail to talk about the histories of places at all. In this selection from her book The Power of Place, she unearths racialized, classed, and gendered accounts of place in order to reveal how those in privileged positions can bury the truth of occupation and inhabitance in historical geographies at various scales. In one example, Hayden describes how Chinese migrants built much of the US railroad system in the 19th century,

For many Westerners, more specifically the driven citizens of the United States of America, time is viewed as a straight line. Our children realize this, consciously or not, early on. They make timelines in school, their classes switch on the hour, their intelligence is measured on a scale. We are born, we come of age during adolescence. We set a goal, we work to achieve success. Birth and death, childhood and adulthood are stages that occur only once. Life is black and white. Separate. The past is the past, the future is the future. Traveling on a straight line, we can only look forwards.

Geography shapes who we are and our conceptualization of the world. Where we are situated in space determines who we are and how we interact with it. In his book, Race, Place and the Law, David Delaney takes on geopolitics, the actions or practices intended to shape what spatial relationship look like, the spatial conditions of social life. He discusses how every person has a geography of experience, that is, an individual way they negotiate a space. This means the same spaces can be negotiated differently. Overall, he talks about the different intersections between race, place and the law. More specifically, how black and white americans have been distributed in space and the function of legal practice in this process. He draws on court cases

According to Doreen Massey, Space is “a complex web of relations of domination and subordination, of solidarity and cooperation” (Massey 1993, p.81, cited in Neely and Sumura 2011). This definition allows one to see the incorporation of the ‘power over’, how a person will have the ‘power over’ someone (domination) and therefor that someone will be subordinate. As well as the contrast between

In Mark Davidson’s article, ‘Displacement, Space and Dwelling: Placing Gentrification Debate’, he cites several contemporary case studies where certain deteriorated areas have been targeted for redevelopment and subsequent evictions have taken place. Using several philosophical authors, such as Heidegger and Lefebvre, Davidson’s focuses on the effect spatial metaphors have on displacement, and how these concepts tie into the conceptualization of space. In this paper I will compile a thorough summary of the article and formulate a comprehensive analysis of Davidson’s arguments as well as his sources.

In the book, The Power of Place Harm De Blij makes the reader consider many facets of living on earth that they have most likely never thought about before. Where we are born, where we are from, and where we live have more of an impact on who we are than I have ever considered. Throughout the book De Blij uses each chapter to address a different aspect of geography and the power it has over life.

There is an inextricable link between physical locations and personal identity: the one affects the other as the environmental psychologist Harold Proshansky states in “The City and Self-Identity”(Proshansky, 1983) “Place-identity is defined as those dimensions of self that define the individual’s personal identity in relation to the physical environment”. So, does the way locations affect our individual identity determine how we are included or excluded from parts of society, and how is the perception of places influenced by contrasts with other locations resulting in a sense of attachment or disassociation?

With a concept as difficult as time travel, without the overt use of captions, how can you convey that you’re in a different point in time? Zemeckis tackled this issue deftly through his use of dialogue, props, and set design. In the opening period in 1985 he sets the tone of where you are and what defines the ‘present’ or ‘normal’ so that when everything changes after Marty steps inside the DeLorean, Zemeckis doesn’t need to use a caption announcing the year 1955. The viewer is able to easily

It could argued that our common-sense notion of endurance through time is incorrect. That this mistaken self-conception lead us to experience the passage of time. If so, this would be illusory no? And if this enduring ‘me’ is an illusion then so is the passage of time.

What is time travel? Inevitably, it involves a discrepancy between time and time. Any traveler departs and then arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure to arrival (positive, or perhaps zero) is the duration of the journey. But if he is a time traveler, the separation in time between departure and arrival does not equal the duration of his journey. He departs; he travels for an hour, let us say; then he arrives. The time he reaches is not the time one hour after his departure. It is later, if he has traveled toward the future; earlier, if he has traveled toward the past. If he has traveled far toward the past, it is earlier even than his departure (p. 145).

Place” – focusing on creating a unique and relaxing experience and atmosphere. The “Third Place” is one

Yi-Fu Tuan discussed “Place ' as a location created by human experiences (Tuan, 2001). Whereas ‘space’ may have no human connection, a ‘place’ carries meanings given by humans. It can be any size - a city, neighbourhood or a

There are two types of relationships between permanence and place. Architectural distinction helps to particularize a place from its surroundings. It is a static permanence. It is related to physical relationship between the building and place, its endurance, firmness and stability. Second fundamental factor is time. Time is responsible to create long lasting dispositions resulting in notable events which help to create permanent traditions that are embedded to its place. This dynamic permanence is based on mental relationship between community and place, through consciousness, awareness and various activities related to it. (Tuan, 2014)

It is paradoxical to have a course, which revolves round the corrosiveness of faulted Western notions of time and its depiction through abstraction, identify itself with an abstract title but argue for the concreteness and tangibility of the portrayal of time and space. A Place Beyond Time does just that. Containing a vastly abstract title, A Place Beyond Time may at first glance appear to properly relate time as a tangent notion with space. Upon further contemplation, however, it becomes patent that A Place Beyond Time possesses a conspicuous absence present in its philosophy of aloofness from intangibility. And although the name of the course attempts to tackle and manifest the complications of abstract and concrete time, it is through its lack of definition and precision, lack of possession, and lack of sensation of repetition that A Place Beyond Time fails to properly capitalize on this dilemma.