The end of Place as We Know It? Attempts at Conceptualization

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Issue: Volume 4, Issue 1, 2010

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This article is an attempt to join in the ongoing in recent years debate on the conceptualization of place in times of global changes, which on the one hand have freed the place from its limitation and confinement, and on the other hand have weakened its basic function of social creation of meanings, of sense of community, of existential security, of ingraining in and of trust. In the situation of the increasingly more frequent appropriation of the places by corporations, means of transportation and information, the ideal of place, although it departs from its primary physicality moving to the sphere of imagination effectively fuelled by the marketing industry, still remains the fundamental environment of most people’s everyday life. I believe that a challenge of our times is a revision of various circles’ attitudes towards negligence of everyday culture, whose significant part seems to be the place – a live tissue of social relationships and collective identities. However, some architects and sociologists underline unanimously that there is interdependence between designing the urban environment and social production of place. From the sociological point of view place is more than just the urban form. The places have to be conceived as the collection of variously interrelated spaces (physically and virtually), enabling different activities. In the times of globalization, the places do not disappear from the surface of the earth, but they rather undergo the reconfiguration process that consists in developing the exchange with the other places. The selection of the issues in the text, of which the author is fully aware, does not exhaust the discussed problems, although they are not chosen at random.

 

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About journal

Title: Human Geographies - Journal of Studies and Research in Human Geography
ISSN online: 2067-2284
ISSN print: 1843-6587
Imprint: University of Bucharest
Frequency: Biannual (May&November)
First volume: 1/2007
Current volume: 17/2023
Language: English
Indexed in: SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS, EBSCO (SocINDEX), ProQuest (Social Science Journals, SciTech Journals, Natural Science Journals), Index Copernicus, National Technical Information Service (NTiS), Bodleian Libraries, ExLibris SFX, DOAJ, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library, Google Scholar, Ulrich
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EDITORS


Prof. dr. Liliana Dumitrache
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography- Human and Economic Geography Department, 1 Nicolae Balcescu Av., 010041, Bucharest, Romania

Dr. Daniela Dumbrăveanu
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography- Human and Economic Geography Department, 1 Nicolae Balcescu Av., 010041, Bucharest, Romania

Dr. Mariana Nae
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography- Human and Economic Geography Department, 1 Nicolae Balcescu Av., 010041, Bucharest, Romania

Dr. Gabriel Simion
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography- Human and Economic Geography Department, 1 Nicolae Balcescu Av., 010041, Bucharest, Romania

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