In a variety of disciplinary fields (including architecture,
environmental psychology, human geography, and sociology
among others), the concept of place (also variously
referred to as sense of place, place attachment, and place
identity) has emerged as a prominent focus for exploring
the relationship between humans and the environment.
Invigorated by the emergence in the late 1960s of a
humanistic critique in geography, the concept gained
prominence among phenomenological researchers in architecture
and geography in the 1970s with the publication of
work such as Norberg-Schulz’s (1980) Genius Loci:
Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Relph’s (1976)
Place and Placelessness, and Tuan’s (1977) Space and
Place: The Perspective of Experience. Interest in the
concept of place was initially slow to spread beyond
phenomenological researchers and humanistic geographers
due to the dominance of quantitative and positivistic