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Changing Places A level Geography Notes
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AQA A level Geography comprehensive revision notes Achieved A* grade
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Tori McAlister Changing placesPlace = a location with meaning (social/cultural/personal/subjective level)
Placemaking = the deliberate shaping of an environment to facilitate social interaction
and improve a community’s quality of life
Perception of place = the way in which place is viewed or regarded by people, can be
influenced by media representation/personal experience
3 aspects of place:
Location = ‘where’ a place is e.g coordinates on a map
Locale = the place where something happens/is set, or that has particular events as-
sociated with it. Takes into account the effect of people on the place e.g culture
Sense of place = subjective + emotional attachment people have to a place, devel-
oped by experience and knowledge of a particular area
All aspects of place (apart from its location) are constantly changing:
• The physical characteristics e.g rivers migrate/volcanic eruptions
• Human characteristics e.g migration, new generations
• Flows in and out of a place e.g new investments
• The sense of place an individual has e.g a park will have a different meaning to
someone has an adult compared to when they were a child
Theoretical approaches to place:
1. Descriptive approach: the world is a set of places and each place can be studied +
is distinct
2. Social constructionist approach: place is a product of social processes e.g Stone-
henge
3. Phenomenological approach: each individual has a personal relationship with a
place
Insider and outsider perspectives on place
‘To be inside a place is to belong to it and identify with it’ (Relph)
Insider = belonging + identifying to a place
Outsider = little/no relationship with a place due to being less familiar with it
Tim Cresswell: people, things + practices are strongly linked to particular places.
When these links are broken/people act out of place they have committed a ‘crime’
e.g graffiti on AOOB
Being an insider/outsider can be influenced by age, sexuality, gender, race etc.
Near + far places are distinguished by:
• Geographical distance
• Emotional connection
• Familiarity - based on personal experience + media representation
Experienced places = places a person has spent time in
Media places = places a person has only read about/see on films and not visited
A persons sense of media place can differ from the lived experience of the same place
as the media may present an area differently e.g tourist websites
The importance of place can be seen by its impact on 3 aspects:
- Identity. Evident through many scales:
- Localism: affection for/emotional ownership of a place e.g religious churches
- Regionalism: consciousness/loyalty to a distinct region
- Nationalism: loyalty/devotion to a nation e.g patriotism, flag
- Belonging
- Well-being
1
, Tori McAlister Changing places
Doreen Massey
• Wrote about a global sense of place
• Questioned the idea that places are static
• Argued places are dynamic - have multiple identities + do not have to have bound-
aries
• Used the example of ‘Kilburn High Road’ (her local shopping centre)
• The character of a place can only be seen + understood by linking that place to oth-
ers
• ‘What we need, it seems to me, is a global sense of the local, a global sense of place’
Endogenous + exogenous factors
Endogenous factors = characteristics of the place itself/factors which have originated
internally e.g mountains, soil type
Exogenous factors = external factors influencing a place e.g tourists, hurricanes
Endogenous factors Exogenous factors
Location - where a place is, features present Relative location to other places e.g com-
e.g coast muter settlements
Topography - shape of the landscape, affects Tourism impacts hotels/services
land use e.g farming
Physical geography - environmental features Flows of investment e.g Nissan factory in Sun-
of a place e.g rock type derland influenced the characteristics of Sun-
derland e.g employment type
Land use - human activities that occur there, Migration - impacts the ethnicity
defines the character of a place
Built environment and infrastructure - human
built structures for transport etc, impacts con-
gestion
Demographic + economic characteristics -
who lives there, age, gender, education level,
ethnicity, population size, employment type/
rates
Globalisation of place
• May have made place less important as global capitalism erodes local cultures
• Produces identical/homogenised places
• E.g Starbucks is everywhere
James Kunstler: processes e.g urban sprawl cause community-less cities. ‘Every
place is like no place in particular’ - placelessness, known as ‘clone towns’ in the UK
BUT glocalisation opposes this: multinational companies are increasingly having to
adapt to the local marketplace e.g McDonald’s removed beef in Hindu countries
Belonging = being part of a community, important to make a place sustainable + suc-
cessful. Influenced by: age, gender, religion etc.
Character of a place = physical + human features that help distinguish it from an-
other place
How do you assess character of place?
• Direct observation
• Physical morphology of the landscape
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