Wilfred M. McClay & Ted V. McAllister, editors Wuy PLAce MATTERS Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America ce) New Atlantis Books ixcounTeR BOOKS - NEW YORK -LONDONINTRODUCTION Why Place Matters Witerep M. McCLay ‘Tue MosT FAMOUS WoRDS about the city of Oakland, Caliomi ‘ame from the pen of Gertrude Stein. There was, she declared, no “there” there? This line has been widely understood as acasualy dis ‘missive judgment upon that clty, and it has been used and reused ‘countless times, a a barb directed ata variety of objects. Unfortu~ nately, her quip Isalso the chief thing that many people, patialaziy| rnon-Califoniane, are likely to know about Oakland. Is beier-of| neighbor Berkley, home of the most eminent ofthe Univerity af California campuses, and always eager to demonstrate its cultural lan, has even cested a genly witty piece of public art called “HERETHERE” that plays on Stes words? The installation stands atthe border of th tw cites, with the word "HERE" onthe Berkeley side, and the word “THERE” on the Oakland side. As you might ‘expec, Onklanders dont much like it There has even been & party rebellion, soto speak in which an intrepid army of Knitters covered up the “T* on the Oakland side witha huge and elaborate tes-ozy? “This is how they conduct cultural warfare inthe Bay Area, where ‘some people clea have too much time on their hands,2-INtRopucrion Yet the irony ofall is that when Stein penned those words in her sutoblogrophy, they were net meaat ass snappy put-down, She wea {hinking of vrei ent dterent, Ouland had ben extremely important to her when she ved there asa child asa ae stable place THE PLACES oF our Lives ‘Aihough Place” isthe most general of words, the things to which it aims Ate very specific “Place” asa concept is highly abavocy a phces in particular are concrete palpable, intimately ‘meaningful. ach plc is diferent. ach of wcomes from jas such «pare arWay PLACE MATTERS 3 and unreproducible somewhere, and considers someplace (or places) cea Eich of us knows, too, that“a sense of place” is as much an achieve. ‘mentas given condition. Although one could ague that “place” is ‘ukimately merely a point on some coordinate system, such a fit footed assertion misses the inherently phenomenological character ‘ofplace. Which explains why not al places are equal, and some places seem to us to be more filly “places” than others. In afrenetialy ‘mobile and ever more porous and inexorably globalizing world, we stand powerflly in need of such stable and coherent places in our lives—to ground us and orient us, and mark off finite aren, eich with memory, for our activity as parents and children, as fiends and ‘neighbors, anda free and productive citizens. ‘And we know thatthe sens of place, even when itis very strong, 's also very fragile and easly lost Steins famous line about Oakland {is testinony to that. By the same token, the ghostly imprint ofa sense ‘of place may persist even when the physical conditions for it have Vanished, lke the sensations that linger after limb has been amp tated. Sach isthe uterly quotidian incident described ina haunting litle colamn that Veriyn Klinkenborg wrote several years ago forthe "New York Times a demonstration that the sente of place ean apply ‘specidly powerfully to the most commonplace and unremarkable thingsThe column was a response tothe dosing ofa Korean market In his neighborhood—not an event of obvious importance, and yet ‘iinkenborg found himself maintaining ‘a mental map” of the place: ‘now just where the seltzer sin a store that no longer exists, ‘ean walk straight tothe died pineapple, but onl ia the past. Some art ofme had quietly made an inventory ofthe necesites— ‘the analgesics and toothbrushes and smal shampoos—that had ‘migrated tothe front counter, which was a drugstore in tel "Ther ate ute places to buy all hese things and not far away Batihere is stil a perfectly good Korean marke in my head. ‘We carry wit us these fotprins of vanished places: apart-4 -Iwrropucrion rents we moved out of years ago, drycleaners that went out ‘of business, restaurants that stopped serving, reighborhoods where only the street names remain the same. Tiss the long- ‘gone geography of New York. I look up atthe bullings and ‘ny to imagine al the ives that have passed thrcugh them* ‘Weare somtimesle he concludes. in the strange postion oknow- {ng our way around a world that ean no longer be und ‘What tink and Klinkenborg acounts share istheir depiction of an ordinary but disquieting phenomenon: the tarslation of place fnto space—the tansformation of @seting tha! had once been charged with human meaning into on fom whick the meaning bas departed, something empty and ine a mere space We allhae expe rienced this some of us many times. Think ofthe sange emotion we fee when we ae moving out ofthe place where we have been living, and we finish dearing all ou belongings ou ofthe partment othe house orth dorm room-and we ook back ait ore last ime, 0 se 4 space that use tobe the center of our wold, reduced to nothing ‘ut Barewalls and bare lor. Even when there ar few remaining signs of our time there—fading was pockmarked with nll hoes, scuffs inthe floor, spots onthe earpet—they serve en to render the ‘moment more pignant, since we know that thete small nures to te propery wilson be painted over and tied up, so tha inthe fallnes of ime there willbe no trace lft of usin ht spot. BLURRING DISTINCTIVENESS One should not be too melodramatic about this. Such changes and transitions, however painful they may sometimes be, are part of a healthy and dynamic human existence. What is diferent now is not that they happen but that they have become so pervasive reflecting a social and psychological uidty that seems to markour times As we have become ever more mobile and more connected and absorbed in «panoply of things that are not immediatly presen tous, our actualWHY PLACE MATTERS -5 sa tangible places seem es andes important to ws, nore and more transient or provisional or interchangeable or even dspossble. The pun of parting becomes les precisely because there so ite reason {overt oneslin plac” to begin with Sometimes i almos seems 2s if we are ving ke plants witout roos, drawing our sustenance sot from the ears beneath our fet but fom the satelite that enet- ‘deus and the conputer clouds tha ed and absorb our energies. Iebas not ves been thus of nurse and we forget how rceniy things wer, as tey had ben frm the beginning of tine, sent ceely diferent. twas not much more than a century ago that the lvesof most Americans were confined within narrowlocal adn whathistorian Robert Wiebe reveling called island communites™ ‘Theabiltyofthee and communities andthe individuals who com pried them to communicate acoslarge distances waslinited bythe Vas seas of pace and ine—by the dances that sepanted them and the immense tie it took to taverse those datances. The term “real time’ tothe extent would have ad any meaning al referred to sec local time, measured by reference tothe sus reaching ts ‘zenithat tha partcular locaton Fa frm being pz or an enigma, ‘ond “place inthe word” was a given for a great may, f not most, ‘men and women With re exception, the person tt one Became an the life that oe lived were nextel kinked to the geographical locaton where one wasbomn and raised Such ators reained even cone moved, as Americans shways have since on origins lingered on asa structural ma of one wordy existence, nearyashard and fst 1s on bologialmakeup. On could only mov ofan fas. Buta cascading ara oftechoologial and soll innovations has, with atonehing ped readered those considerations beset Ine pensive travel and instantaneous telecommmunicatons have almost climinated the isolation of provincial Ie everywhere in the world, snd resulted in the unprecedented mobility of bot ndividuas and cate populations, the burrng of atonal lentes ad poroasness of boundaries, andthe rlenlss global Gow of labor, apt, and goods. ll thse forces erase distances and erode barriers that ad6 -inrropuerion formerly been considered an inescapable part ofthe human condl- ‘on. And the term "rel time” now refers, not to local time, but ots ‘opposite—the possibilty of near-universal simltaneity, 3 that for ‘example, Ican have a lively conversation in “ral time" with anyone ‘on any part ofthe planet. ‘This revolution should be a surprise tows, sine it has been com: {ng at us steadily ever since the invention of the locomotive and the telegraph. And make no mistake, there is much to celebrate in these developments. They give crucial support to one of the most powerful and fundamental, and universally appealing, of all American ideas:the {idea of freedom, We embrace freedom because we believe fervent in the fllest breadth of individual human possibility, and share a dep conviction that no one horizons in ie shouldbe dictated by the con- Atons of his or he birth. Nothing i more quintessentially American ‘han that conviction, But interestingly, the word "pace rae plays any role in this freedom narrative and infact, what oeit plays ends tobe agate. One’ place of origin is seen aan impediment, something to be overcome. Place” may even point toward notions of social hieat- hy that Americans generally find anathema, Many of us can sill ‘remember when the idea of “knowing your place” was sed to promote ‘aca segregation and the social and legal subordination of women, But very litle of thats relevant anymore and it would be a grave ‘ror to think thatthe problems of the pat are the same as these today. We now have a new set of problems, which have been engen- ered precisely by our dazaing achievements. One of those problems fs the widespread sense that something is now seriously out of tal: sncein the way we liv, All the technological wizardry end indivieal ‘empowerment have unsettled all facets of Le and given rise to pro= found feelings of disquiet and insecurity in many Americans No one «an yet reckon the human costs of uch radical changes, but they may ‘wm out tobe far higher than we have imagined. Accompanying this disqulet isa gnawing sense that something ‘rnportant in our fundamental human nature is being lost, ebandoned ‘or surified inthis headlong rush and that this somthing” remainsWHY PLACE MATTERS -7 ist as vital to our fll ourishng as human beings as it was in the times when we had fr fewer choices on offer. Coulditbe the case that {he plbal-scleinterconnectednes of things may be comlngat too high ‘price Could it be the case thatthe variety and spontaneous diver- sly of the world as we have known it fr all the prior centuries of ‘human history is being gradually leveled and effaced, and insensibiy ‘transformed into something standardized, artical, oles pastless, and bland—a world of interchangeable airport terminals and fran. chise hotels and restaurants, a world of smooth surfices designed to ‘aclitate perpetual movement rather than rooted fourishing? A word ‘ofspace rather than place in which there ae no “there” there? Could it be the case that one ofthe chief things neglected by this _ettern of ceaseless movement is precisely the opportinity to liv dig- nifed and purposeful les of self government and civc engagement, thekindoflives that thinkers since theme of Aristotle have regarded ‘asthe highest expression of human flourishing? Isthe livin of such lives even conceivable in a world without "theres"? "These concems should not be confused with fecings of nostalgi, such a8 one finds in sentimental discourse about lat “community” fen emanating from individuals who would not for asecond tolerate ‘thekind of constraints on individual Uberty that thick” communities ofthe past always required, For better or worse, while wholesale roll back of modernity may be concelvable asa thought experiment, itis simply not a serious practical option. But that does net mean accept- lngan unacceptable status quo, in which human flourishing itself is rendered imposible Instead, we should seek to discever how, given the American people a they are, and American ecancmic and socal life si now exsts—and not as those things canbe imagined to be — _weaan find means of resisting the steady homogenization ofthe world ‘This means cutvaing a strong sense of place wherever we find it— ‘and thereby cultivating the human goods that depend epon an endur- {ng tense of place and ae imposible without it.8 -1wrropuerron LIVING “PLaces™ Je bth titel and ts Sigurative meanings, “place” refers not only ‘0 geographal spot but toa defined niche inthe socil order, one ‘hac in the werd. Thus, when we say that we have “found ou place” [We are speaking not only of «physical location, but ofthe achiene, Bat any effort afrm the importance of place bringt us int ten sion with the same forces that are shrinking and trans-