Shaping People and Environments

• People not only filter information from their environments through neuro physiological and physiological proceeded but draw on personality and culture to produce cognitive images of their environment

• The human-environment relationship results in a variety of ways of understanding the world around us as well as different ways of being in the world as information is filtered by people

How we Make Sense of the World

• Economically places emerge through all kinds of transactions that result from the complexities of the land market

• Places are the result of a wide range of forces from economic to social

• Places reflect the tensions between social groups as well as their harmonious interactions

Territoriality

• Territoriality is the persistent attachment of individuals or people to a specific location or territory

• Social scientists have argued that territoriality is a natural human instinct that impacts our sense of safety and security as well as our sense of stimulation and our identity

• Proxemics is the study of social and political meaning people give to space

• Territoriality is a material form of power as it regulates interaction, access to resources and people and can be a symbol of group membership(us vs them)

Cultural Identities and Landscapes

• Among the most important relations are cultural identities of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality

• Often these identities come together in a group and their influence becomes central to our understanding of how group identity shapes space and is shaped by it

Semiotics

• To interpret our environment we must learn how to read the codes written into landscapes

• Semiotics is a process in high codes signify important information about landscapes

• Landscapes as different from each other as shopping malls and war memorials can be understood in terms of their semiotics. Although it is important to appreciate that even when certain landscapes have intended meaning by those who make have created them those who perceive them as make their own sense of that landscape

Global Consumption

• A shared consciousness has diffused certain values and attitudes around the globe and the commonalities have been accompanied by the growing importance of material consumption

• One of the effects of global culture is the commodification of spaces or the “Disneyfication” in the heritage industry where regions capitalize on stereotypical imagery of their regions to “sell” to global consumers

• Many people have responded to homogenized global culture with counter movements including rediscovering their own “culture of place” preserving distinct cultural values and difference to global culture and participating in counter cultures like the Cittaslow movement