Definition of Place

Place is as formulated by Tim Cresswell, a British human geographer, a word wrapped in common sense and “as we already think we know what it means, it is hard to get beyond that common-sense level in order to understand it in a more developed way.” (Cresswell, 2015, p. 6). It is in that sense as he puts it “both simple and complicated” (ibid). A place is both physical, but also encompasses a lot of meaning, activity, negotiations etc., and it is therefor helpful to break it down into smaller pieces to fully understand the concept. Cresswell draws on the political geographer John Agnew (1987) when outlining three fundamental aspects of place as a meaningful location (Cresswell, 2014; 2015):

Location

Location refers to the objective position with fixed coordinates, measured in longitude and latitude. It also allows us to situate places in relation to others via distances and directions. It answers the question Where?

Locale

Locale refers to the material setting of social relations. It refers both to the physical landscape of a place, e.g., buildings, roads, parks etc., and to the particular practices that distinguishes the place from others, e.g., in a school building, which has a design that very often marks it out as a school. You can tell by the positioning of buildings, a playground or schoolyard. Inside you can recognize a school by different artefact and the interior layout of the building (the physical dimension), where students and teachers are present in a fixed timeframe, they sit in classrooms in lines (or circles or other) and learn from a teacher, who is typically positioned opposite the students, facing the class. When the bell rings, students and teacher leave the class for break that typically takes place outside, some students might linger in the hallways. In some schools only children of a certain gender attend, in some schools they use uniforms etc. (the practices).    

Sense of place

Sense og place refers to the human relationships to the place. It refers to the subjective and emotional attachment people have to a place. This can either be individually or collectively. To the students in the school-example before, the meaning and emotions attached to the school as a place will differ according to their experiences and perceptions of being a student in that school; their relations to the other students, to the teachers, to learning, to the physical environment etc. This dimension focusses on our subjective and lived formation of meaning. Thus, it answers the questions of How? Why? and with what consequences? How is this students’ or these students’ relationship to the school? Why? And what consequences does it have for the student or students? This dimension is therefor also one that can only be researched empirically. Translated into social work it means that a social worker must experience and gain knowledge about this dimension through the perspective of the service users.

Using these three aspects of the concept place can bring new understandings and practices to social work in the city. When referring people to services, when understanding their motivations and habits, routes and priorities it helps to know that all these different dimensions are connected via their relationships, not just to other people, but also very much so to the way they give the world meaning, to what constitutes safety, home, dignity, leisure, work, anxiety, happiness etc. to individuals.