CGP Meaning & Representations of Place

• Sense of place

  How people feel about a place
• People perceive and present places differently
• Meaning of place

  The meaning a place has to the people that know it
• Different people or groups can attach different meanings to the same place
• Insider/outsider


  How people feel about a place depending on whether their experience has been positive or negative
• Representation of place


  How individuals or organisations portray places they know about to others
• People or organisations can represent places in different ways depending on their perspective
• Representation of place

  • Individuals presenting a place positively if they are proud of it
  • Individuals presenting a place negatively if they had a bad experience
  • Organisations presenting places positively to gain from how they are perceived
  • Newspapers focusing on negative aspects to sell more copies
• Meanings and representations of places

  Can change how people behave towards those places
• Meanings and representations of places


  Are important as many people generate their identity based on the places they feel connected to
• Some groups try to influence people's view of place or create new meanings for particular places to change behaviour towards those places
• Groups that try to influence perceptions of place

  • Governments
  • Corporate bodies
  • Community/local groups
• Place marketing

  1. Selling places like products to consumers through websites, logos, advertising, social media

  2. Reimaging

  3. Changing existing negative perceptions of a place through redevelopment

  4. Rebranding

  5. Giving a place a new appealing identity through reimaging, marketing and regeneration
• Different forms of representing places can create contrasting representations
• Forms of representing places

  • Quantitative (statistics, data, graphs, charts)
  • Qualitative (art, poetry, photography)
• Statistics

  Objective data that can give quantitative information about places, but don't tell you about the sense of place
• Maps


  Can show quantitative and qualitative data about places, but can also be misleading
• Films, photography, art


  Show what places look like and can give a sense of character, but only represent what the creator wants to show
• Stories, articles, music, poetry

  Can describe places and evoke a sense of place, but only from the author's perspective