Definitions of what place meanings are and how place meanings change over time. Includes detailed examples of how places are represented in different sources including: different map types, paintings and google.
Meaning : individual or collective perceptions of place
Representation: how a place is portrayed or ‘seen’ in society
Both chance over time and vary between communities
Belfast: one place, two representations:
286,000 inhabitants and industrial city but underwent 30-year conflict called ‘The Troubles’
but since Good Friday Peace Agreement 1998 there has been sustained calm. Since there
has been large scale redevelopment as ‘quarters’ to emphasise it’s history abd culture e.g.
The TItanic QUarter and is now home to 10 companies. Tourism has inc significantly in the
last decade to more than 6.5million visitors contribute $450million annually to local economy.
Managed to change international image from one of violence and conflict to culture and
vibrancy.
Meanings of place: meanings attributed to a place as influenced by our interactions with it.
Can be emotional and research suggests that connecting to our surrounding environment
established knowledge and appreciation for its resources.
Place memory - the ability of place to make the past come to life in the present e.g. photos
or souvenir. Iron Bridge Museum enables visitors to experience a sense of place by standing
inside recreated historical places.
Management and manipulation of the perception of place: International places tend to be
influenced by media and governments are keen to attract investment so positive place
perception is important at an international level. E.g. the monarchy play a pivotal role in
promoting international relations for the UK. Also important at a local scale as people prefer
to live somewhere with a good reputation. Different agents of change will aim to manage
perception of place e.g. national or local governments or tourist organisations. Government:
strategies include place marketing, rebranding and reimaging.
Place marketing: advertising campaigns using facebooks, logos and websites.
Rebranding: used to discard any negative perceptions of place e.g. ‘People make Glasgow’
as a form of crowdsourcing many argue must start from the ‘inside’ but its hard to satisfy
everyone involved e.g. local gov, home-owners, and visitors and has led to locals moving
out.
Re-imaging: seeks to discard negative perceptions of a place to generate a new positive one
e.g. Liverpool 1980-90 went from deindustrialisation and riots to large scale regeneration of
the Tate Liverpool, The Merseyside Development Corporation used the term ‘There’s a life in
the old docks yet’.
Corporate: an organisation or group of people that is identified by a particular name. Many
corporations have an interest in place but some want to manipulate perceptions of place e.g.
creating an positive image for tourists using brochures which adopt a unique selling point.
Great Western Railway used artistic posters to advertise Torquay, Britain.
, Local people and community: play a vital role in improving a sense of place as they have the
most ‘insider’ experience, they also play an important role engaging on social media.
Representations of place and the use of quantitative and qualitative sources:
It’s important to present studies in both qualitative and quantitative ways and acknowledge
their limitations because they can be presented in different ways.
Statistics:
E.g. UK census has been used to detail soc and economic characteristics and he;p reveal
info about places such as age, gender, economic deprivation and ethnicity. It is a large scale
form of quantitative data provided by ONS although it's not as objective as it may appear
because people choose what data to include. It's also low in validity.
Population 24,477, 95% born in UK, 93% white, 50/50 m/f
Maps:
Need to be viewed critically as they have distorted reality e.g. early maps ‘promoted the
cause of the empire’. They can include hidden bias and influence. Google Maps filters
places by directing people towards businesses that have engineered their appearance on
the first page of a google search.
Counter-mapping: a bottom-up process by which people produce their own maps, informed
by their local knowledge and understanding of places e.g. Adam Dant made a map of
Spitalfields London with 50 portraits of distinctive local people and their stories therefore
giving a factual and conveys a sense of place.
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