Space vs. place
From Geography
A philosopher who explored the difference between space and place was Yi fu tuan, a humanistic geographer. According to the humanistic geography the difference between ‘space’ and ‘place can be described in the extent to which human beings have given meaning to a specific area.
‘Space’ can be described as a location which has no social connections for a human being. No value has been added to this space. According to Tuan (1977, p.164-165) it’s an open space, which does not invite or encourage people to fill the space by being creative.
'Place' is in contrary more than just a location and can be described as a location created by human experiences. The size of this location does not matter and is unlimited. It can be a city, neighborhood, a region or even a classroom etc. In fact ‘place’ exists of ‘space’ that is filled with meanings and objectives by human experiences in this particular space. According to Tuan (1977, p.6) a ‘place’ does not exist of observable boundaries and is besides a visible expression of a specific time period. Examples are arts, monuments and architecture.
The meaning people give to an area can be derived from two types of experiences, namely:
- direct experiences arise through peoples senses such as vision, smell, sense and hearing.
- and indirect experience of politics, opinions of other people, media etc.
Small places are easily perceived by the senses, while the meaning of bigger places more depends on the indirect experiences. This also stated that the meaning we give to ‘space’ correlates with the distance from the human to this ‘place’. The underlying theory for this way of thinking is the phenomenology, which tries to derive the essential features of experiences from the direct and indirect experiences.
Literature
- Cloke, P.& Philo, Ch. & Sadler, D. (1991) Approaching Human Geography. Chapman, London.
- Tuan, Y. (1975). Place: an experiential perspective, The Geographical Review, LXV(2)
- Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and Place. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
By Marjolein Selten and Fleur van der Zandt
