Developing A Sense of Place
Understanding how sense of place develops and changes is relevant to understanding how people interact with their environment in general and considering how this interaction may become more sustainable. For these reasons, human geographers and social psychologists have studied how a sense of place develops, including the importance of comparisons between places, learning from elders and observing natural disasters and other events. Of particular note is the importance of childhood experiences. Environmental psychologists have quantified links between exposure to natural environments in childhood and environmental preferences later in life. Learning about surrounding environments during childhood is strongly influenced by the direct experience of playing, as well as through the role of family, culture, and community. The special bond which develops between children and their childhood environments has been called a ‘primal landscape’ by human geographers. This childhood landscape forms part of people’s identity and constitutes a key point of comparison for considering subsequent places later in life. As people move around as adults, they tend to consider new places in relation to this baseline landscape experienced during childhood.Sense of place is used as a model for community based psychosocial support programs
Read more about this topic: Sense Of Place
Famous quotes containing the words developing a, developing, sense and/or place:
“The hearts of Afro-American women are too warm and too large for race hatred. Long suffering has so chastened them that they are developing a special sense of sympathy for all who suffer and fail of justice.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“Every society consists of men in the process of developing from children into parents. To assure continuity of tradition, society must early prepare for parenthood in its children; and it must take care of the unavoidable remnants of infantility in its adults. This is a large order, especially since a society needs many beings who can follow, a few who can lead, and some who can do both, alternately or in different areas of life.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)
“Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitions ... he has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover’s sense of the moment of crisis, and he knew ... how costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
““Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)