An orienting sense of place

Where are we?

Well, just look around. Wherever you are right now, take a look. What tells you where you are? Probably anything that is both familiar and unique. If it’s some place you call “home”, you are likely to be taking rather good care of it. And if it’s some place you recognize as someone else’s home, you are likely going to treat it with some respect.

Are you outdoors, perhaps, sitting in a cafe somewhere?  Did you take a walk today and notice anything that told you where you were? Again, whatever oriented you to where you were was probably something both familiar and unique.

Now take a walk down your street. If you live in Eastwood, walk down James Street. Notice what is both familiar and unique about each building. Would your elderly neighbor feel the same way about what you find orienting? Or would she be thinking about something else that used to be there, some place that held the memories of times spent with friends and family now gone. If some of the buildings are gone, then there’s a sense of loss. If most of the buildings are gone (as in Batavia), then there is a profound sense of disorientation and loss of ownership. Why care about it or respect it any more?

In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, there is an article about the historic shopping arcades of Paris, built in the first half of the 19th century. I quote:

In an increasingly homogenized Paris, where Ralph Lauren is camped across from La Madeleine and Tommy Hilfiger colonizes the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the businesses in Paris’s historic passages—or arcades—still exude an orienting sense of place.

These unique yet familiar – to Parisians – urban environments let you know where you are. The signs in the shops are all in French. But if you saw signs in English, why you might be in Watertown …

or Buffalo:

What tells us that we’re in Eastwood?