342 Big pictures
century or so ago farmland with distinctive rural towns mostly surrounded the
city, but now they have largely coalesced into the city’s region. Today Boston is
aplace for Bostonians, and the Boston Region a place the rest of us relate to.
Peoplehave an affinity, often strong, for a place (Tuan1977,Jackson1994,
Nassauer1997,Buell2001, 2005). To develop that affinity or place-connectedness,
theyhave lived there for a period, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and expe-
riencing the space. They know some of the people, as well as arrangements of
buildings, roads, and greenspaces. A strong loyalty and caring about the place
often develops. Hardly anyone expresses asense of placefor theplanet or even
ametropolitan area. Ignoring nationalism, rather few people express a strong
sense of place for a nation or a state or province. The smaller the space the more
likely a strong affinity develops, so a town or neighborhood or backyard often
engenders a strong sense of place (Tuan1977,Thayer2003).
Does someone from the Tokyo Region or San Francisco Region or Sao Paulo
Region relate to and care about the region as a whole? Perhaps, because we are
bathed with regional TV--radio--newspaper stories, entertainment events, sports
teams, cultural resources, air pollutants, and more. But ‘‘home range move-
ments” are the real way to gain a sense of place, seeing, feeling, and experiencing
aregion. The daily home range of a person, analogous to an animal’s home range
(Chapter4), includes the routes and sites visited during most days. Where walk-
ing, bicycling, or horse transport prevails, it correlates somewhat with a town or
neighborhood. But with a huge net of paved roads used by motorized vehicles,
thedaily home range may include a few adjacent towns or much of a city.
Still, a person’sannual home range,i.e., the spider web of routes and sites
visited during most years, is perhaps more relevant where needs and activities
are largely done by driving in a vehicle. The annual home range ties the urban
region together in one’s mind, creating a sense of place for a region.
What does a person feel deeply about in a place? Two components at the
human scale may be central, an arrangement of human-made objects and the
nature or natural systems interwoven with it. Unlike animals that live in habitat
space, rarely does a person live surrounded only by nature, though many of us
treasure and are inspired by it. The human-made objects, especially buildings,
roads, walkways, vehicles, and so forth, are probably less important individually
forasense of place than is their collective presence and arrangement. Putting
aside the problem of ‘‘whose place?,” that design of anthropogenic objects may
be sufficient to engender a sense of place for some people.
But perhaps most of us would find the space incomplete or sterile (Kaplanet al.
1998). Adding trees and birds and water and changing weather, for instance, is
needed to bring the place alive. Biophilic design (Chapter2)speaks to the value,
even need, of people for nature. Plants and vegetation are especially familiar
manifestations of nature, but wildlife, flowing water, or sky and weather may