The pedagogy of the American city: revisiting the concepts of place, non-place, and placelessness

Arefi, Mahyar

doi:10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000121

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This participant feels a certain connection with the walkable environment on her route to work, but the "grotty" motorway holds no such meaning for her. This is in line with research contending that 'driving places' are often experienced as 'non-places' (see Arefi , 2004;Augé, 1995;Bull, 2004;Relph, 1976).…”

Section: Perception Of Place and Embodiment In The Citysupporting

confidence: 84%

“…'Driving places', or 'auto-scapes', have frequently been characterised as 'inauthentic' places: terms such as 'placeslessness', 'nonplaces' and the 'geography of nowhere' point to environments devoid of identity and meaning (Arefi , 2004;Augé, 1995;Kunstler, 1993;Morse, 1998;Relph, 1976). The term 'non-place' was originally coined by Webber (1964), who used it to describe the new era in which accessibility had become more important than proximity or propinquity.…”

Section: Mobilities and Urban Sense Of Placementioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring Social Mobilities: Narratives of Walking and Driving in Auckland, New Zealand

2008

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Recent studies have discussed the important role of the automobile in shaping contemporary urban social life. This research used a series of focus groups in Auckland, New Zealand, to illuminate the complex social attitudes and values associated with walking as well as driving. While the car is the dominant transport mode in Auckland, the shortcomings as well as the benefits of automobile use and dependence are well known. Moreover, while walking is often difficult in this urban environment, it continues to be perceived as a potentially useful and appropriate means of transport, and as an important and valued social practice. The paper's findings suggest that the positive perceptions of walking, as a facilitator of health and social life, could be built upon by policy-makers to encourage a greater use of this active form of travel.

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Section: Perception Of Place and Embodiment In The Citysupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Mobilities and Urban Sense Of Placementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Social Mobilities: Narratives of Walking and Driving in Auckland, New Zealand

2008

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“…However, the notion of placelessness (or non-place) in urban public space, whereby landscapes are devoid of identity is being exacerbated by monotonous development patterns through suburban sprawl and increasing land privatization. These placeless developments are negatively impacting a collective sense of community and land stewardship (Arefi, 2004;Calthorpe, 1993;Scannell & Gifford, 2010). Additionally, car dependence and reliance on GPS navigation aids are diminishing individuals' spatial awareness by drawing attention away from their surroundings (Ishikawa, Fujiwara, Imai, & Okabe, 2008;Mondschein, Blumenberg, & Taylor, 2010).…”

Section: Place Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of landmarks and urban form on cognitive maps using virtual reality

Bruns

Chamberlain

2019

Landscape and Urban Planning

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Landmarks are universal components of human urbanization. We are a species driven to mark the land with symbolic structures and craft meaning in our built environments. From ancient wonders such as Stonehenge to modern icons like the St. Louis Arch, we have been designing landmarks since the dawn of civilization. Cities, towns, and neighborhoods incorporate landmarks as elements of cultural expression and tools for navigation. Individuals use landmarks as reference points to create an internal cognitive map, permitting more efficient navigation throughout a city and contributing to a heightened sense of place. To aid in research regarding the role of landmarks on cognitive maps and place-identity, we have designed a novel testing paradigm in which subjects wear a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) and traverse a hypothetical urban environment using a gaming controller. The virtual environment (VE) features a gridded street network measuring 5x5 blocks and guides subjects along a fixed route through residential, park, commercial and industrial districts. Along this fixed route, subjects are exposed to ten distinct landmarks. After navigating the VE, subjects are tasked with delineating their perceived route, landmark locations, and district boundaries through map drawing tasks on grid paper as well as a scene recognition task. The most significant finding revealed landmark configuration accuracy to be highly correlated with performance on the route recall and moderately correlated with performance on the scene recognition task. This suggests that, regardless of the landmark type, individuals who more precisely recalled landmark locations also navigated the route and identified scenes more accurately. Landscape and urban planners can leverage these findings to advocate for the strategic inclusion of landmarks throughout an urban fabric, which we term Landmark Configuration Plans (LCP).

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“…This paper sought to develop a more holistic modus operandi for reading the city. Limited methods of reading the city have prompted new approaches of capturing interpretive nuances (Mahyar Arefi, 2004) based on the elements of the city and their interrelationships.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Interstitial Reading of Istanbul

Ekdi¹,

Arefi

2019

ICONARP

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As palimpsests of multiple layers of historic, geo-political, and socioeconomic complexity, contemporary cities demand innovative methods of deciphering and unraveling their development. Typically referred to as reading the city, these methods of delayering and synthesizing urban complexity have, for long, preoccupied urban planners and decisionmakers. Drawing from its interdisciplinary literature, this paper explores a comprehensive model of reading the city. Using a qualitative approach from both the archival and visual data sources, this study provides a better understanding of complex layers of urbanism that guide urban planners, policy makers and decisionmakers in developing more convenient solutions to urban problems. With multiple layers of its urbanism, Istanbul makes a suitable case study for this purpose. Identifying three types of developments (controlled or top-down, partially controlled and outlawed, bottom-up), different interactive networks provide sufficient grounds for reading Istanbul. Reading these intricate layers of Istanbul's 'closed' and 'open' city (Sennett, 2017) in close proximity to a main transportation artery (D 100 highway) against the broader backdrop of its long history intertwined with geographic and socioeconomic push and pull forces provides a comprehensive tool for adopting similar methods for reading other cities.

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The pedagogy of the American city: revisiting the concepts of place, non-place, and placelessness

Cited by 11 publications

References 8 publications

Exploring Social Mobilities: Narratives of Walking and Driving in Auckland, New Zealand

Exploring Social Mobilities: Narratives of Walking and Driving in Auckland, New Zealand

The influence of landmarks and urban form on cognitive maps using virtual reality

An Interstitial Reading of Istanbul

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