Sense of Place, Identity, and Heritage Landscapes

Sense of place is the meaning, attachment and feelings that people link to a particular location; place identity is how a place helps to define who people are; and heritage landscapes are places that communities value for their historic, cultural or natural significance and that are protected for the future. In brief: a place is a location that has been given meaning by human experience, which is different from space, a more abstract area. The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan called the affection for place topophilia, and Edward Relph described placelessness, in which standardized landscapes lose their distinct character. UNESCO’s World Heritage List includes cultural landscapes, such as rice terraces and sacred mountains.

Places matter to people’s well-being, memory and politics, and what is remembered and protected is often contested. This guide explains the concepts of place, sense of place and identity, how heritage landscapes are recognized and managed, compares the ideas in a table, works through a simple survey example, outlines the history of the humanistic approach and corrects common mistakes.

What is a place, and what is a sense of place?

In geography, space is a location that can be measured and mapped, and place is a location with meaning. A park, a street corner or a village becomes a place because of the experiences, memories and activities that happen there. A sense of place combines the physical character of a location (landscape, buildings, sounds, smells), the activities and community life, and the personal and shared meanings. It includes place attachment, the emotional bond that develops with a place over time, and place dependence, the extent to which a place meets a person’s needs.

Yi-Fu Tuan used the word topophilia (1974) for the love of place and the bonds between people and their surroundings. Edward Relph (1976) described placelessness: places such as airports, shopping malls and identical chain stores that look the same everywhere and offer little sense of the locality. He also made a distinction between insideness (feeling part of a place) and outsideness (feeling detached). Sense of place is not the same for everyone: a long-time resident, a tourist and a migrant may see the same town very differently.

How do places shape identity?

People define themselves partly through the places they belong to: a neighborhood, a city, a region, a nation. Place identity can be shaped by local dialects, food, festivals, sports teams, architecture and stories. Place names carry history and power: Indigenous names have been restored or added next to colonial names in many countries, for example Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia, which was handed back to its Aboriginal owners in 1985, and Aoraki/Mount Cook in New Zealand, which received a dual name in 1998 under a settlement with the Ngāi Tahu. Migration, displacement and rapid change can disturb the bond with place: refugees may lose their home, and gentrification can change a neighborhood so that long-term residents feel that they no longer belong. At the same time, people can feel attached to several places, and to virtual places on the internet.

What are heritage landscapes?

Heritage is what is inherited from the past and valued by the present, including buildings, monuments, landscapes, traditions and practices. A heritage landscape is an area in which human history and natural features are closely connected. UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention (1972) recognizes cultural, natural and mixed sites, and since 1992 has included cultural landscapes, defined as works of the combined action of nature and humans. Tongariro in New Zealand became the first cultural landscape on the list in 1993, and Uluru-Kata Tjuta in Australia is another. Examples include the rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, the vineyards of Lavaux in Switzerland, the Cinque Terre in Italy and the lake district of northwest England. Heritage protection uses designation, planning controls, management plans and support for traditional land users, and it is also managed at the national and local level, through national parks, conservation areas and listed buildings.

Heritage has benefits: it strengthens identity, education and tourism income. It also has costs and risks: the pressure from tourism, the cost of maintenance, restrictions on development and the “freezing” of living places into museums. Intangible cultural heritage, such as languages, crafts, music, rituals and food traditions, is also protected under a UNESCO convention of 2003.

Why is heritage contested?

Heritage is selective: it reflects whose history is remembered and by whom. Dissonant heritage refers to sites that are meaningful for different groups in conflicting ways, such as monuments to colonial figures or to the Confederacy in the United States, which have been the subject of removal and renaming debates. Sites of suffering, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial or slave forts in West Africa, are preserved as memorials and for education, which raises questions of respectful interpretation. Heritage can also be used for political purposes, for national symbols or for “place branding” to attract visitors and investment, which may simplify or commodify local identity. Increasingly, heritage management seeks to involve Indigenous peoples and local communities as partners, with rights to take part in decisions about places that matter to them.

The concepts compared

Worked example: measuring attachment and heritage

The values are hypothetical and illustrate how researchers use surveys.

1. Attachment score: a survey asks 5 questions about attachment to a neighborhood, each scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A resident gives the scores 5, 4, 5, 3 and 4, a total of 21, and an average of 21 ÷ 5 = 4.2, which shows strong attachment.
2. Group comparison: long-term residents (20 years or more) have an average of 4.3 and newcomers (under 2 years) have 3.1. The difference is 4.3 − 3.1 = 1.2 points, or 1.2 ÷ 3.1 = 39% higher, which suggests that attachment grows with time.
3. Survey proportions: of 400 residents asked, 312 say that they would not move if they had the choice. The share is 312 ÷ 400 = 78%.
4. Visitor pressure at a heritage site: a historic town of 8,000 residents receives 640,000 visitors a year, which is 640,000 ÷ 8,000 = 80 visitors per resident per year.
5. Income and maintenance: a site charges a 12 entry fee and has 150,000 paying visitors, which brings in 150,000 × 12 = 1,800,000. If maintenance costs 1,350,000 a year, there is a surplus of 450,000, or 450 ÷ 1,800 = 25% of income.
6. Heritage listing: a town has 1,200 buildings, of which 90 are listed. The share is 90 ÷ 1,200 = 7.5%. If 15 more are added, it rises to 105 ÷ 1,200 = 8.75%.

How did the study of place develop?

The idea of place was central to traditional regional geography. In the 1970s, humanistic geographers such as Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph and Anne Buttimer reacted against the abstract models of spatial science and focused on experience, meaning and feeling. In the 1980s and 1990s, Doreen Massey and others argued that places are not fixed or bounded but are shaped by wider connections and by power relations, a “global sense of place.” The World Heritage Convention was adopted in 1972, and the idea of cultural landscapes was added in 1992. Since the 2000s, work on heritage has stressed living communities, Indigenous perspectives and the role of memory and conflict, as well as the effects of climate change, tourism and conflict on places and their meaning.

Which mistakes are common?

Mistake 1: Using “place” and “space” as if they were the same

Space is a measurable location. Place is space that has meaning for people.

Mistake 2: Assuming that everyone shares the same sense of a place

Residents, newcomers, visitors, young and old people, and different communities may see the same place in very different ways.

Mistake 3: Believing that heritage is fixed and neutral

Heritage is chosen and interpreted, and decisions about what to protect reflect values and power.

Mistake 4: Thinking that protection means freezing a place

Living landscapes need to change to stay alive. Good management balances conservation with the needs of residents.