{"id":3911,"date":"2009-01-02T15:06:56","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T20:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2009\/01\/02\/losing-a-sense-of-place\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:16:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:16:32","slug":"losing-a-sense-of-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/02\/losing-a-sense-of-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing a sense of &#8220;place&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/37\/106204013_51c81582d7.jpg?v=0\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been clearing out my old files, and I came across an article given to <strike>my<\/strike> me a couple of years ago by walking activist Helen Riley: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theecologist.org\/pages\/archive_detail.asp?content_id=584\">Neighbourless Hoods<\/a>&#8220;, by Paul Kingsnorth, first published in <em>The Ecologist<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<p>This article puts its finger on an issue that I&#8217;ve been thinking about for a while, but which I&#8217;ve found hard to articulate: the loss of a sense of &#8220;place&#8221; in a lot of modern urban development (both suburban and downtown). So many new urban spaces are built and occupied in a way that could be anywhere. They don&#8217;t reflect the environment, building materials, history or culture of their specific location, and thus become dully generic. In the author&#8217;s words:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"mainbody\"><font color=\"#333333\">Put simply, the things that make our towns, villages, cities and landscapes different, distinctive or special are being eroded, and replaced by things that would be familiar anywhere. It is happening all over the country [Great Britain, but it applies in North America too] &#8212; you can probably see at least one example of it from where you&#8217;re sitting right now. The same chain stores in every high street, the same bricks in every new housing estate, the same signs on every road, and the same menu in every pub.\u00a0 <\/font><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article is reasonably thoughtful about this issue, and aware of the need to accept change and avoid nostalgia. New developments can reflect a sense of place, if they try &#8212; for example by relating to their immediate environment, shaping buildings and landscape to deal with specific local weather conditions, or using local materials. And a sense of place can evolve in any area &#8212; there are multiple examples across Toronto where unexceptional locations have taken on an identity, for example as a focus for a specific culture such as the &#8220;Indian Bazaar&#8221; on Gerrard East. People are becoming more aware of the issue, as the recent trend towards eating locally-produced food demostrates. There&#8217;s no way to dictate a sense of place, but there are many possible ways to make it easier for one to emerge, and to nurture it when it does. It&#8217;s worth thinking about.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/wvs.topleftpixel.com\">Sam Javanrouh<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been clearing out my old files, and I came across an article given to my me a couple of years ago by walking activist Helen Riley: &#8220;Neighbourless Hoods&#8220;, by Paul Kingsnorth, first published in The Ecologist magazine. This article puts its finger on an issue that I&#8217;ve been thinking about for a while, but<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/02\/losing-a-sense-of-place\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Losing a sense of &#8220;place&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,18,20],"tags":[1405,379,11178,1297,11179,1154,11177,663,75,11180,19,464],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-neighbourhoods","category-urban-design","tag-activist","tag-author","tag-ecologist","tag-helen-riley","tag-locally-produced-food-demostrates","tag-north-america","tag-paul-kingsnorth","tag-sam-javanrouh","tag-suburbs","tag-the-ecologist","tag-toronto","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Losing a sense of &quot;place&quot; - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/02\/losing-a-sense-of-place\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Losing a sense of &quot;place&quot; - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve been clearing out my old files, and I came across an article given to my me a couple of years ago by walking activist Helen Riley: &#8220;Neighbourless Hoods&#8220;, by Paul Kingsnorth, first published in The Ecologist magazine. 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