The arrogance behind a "sense of place"

The idea that government can create a "sense of place" is not just unrealistic idealism, it is hubris.  A sense of place is a relationship the individual has with a particular place that has special meaning.  Jennifer Cross (below), defines the various types of relationships as biographical, spiritual, ideological, narrative, commodified and dependent.  The only type that a developer or government can build or create is the commodified relationship where people relate to their surroundings as a set of amenities.  the commodified relationship may change over time as one's desires change or if the amenities change.  A commodified relationship is a sorry imitation of the real thing.  

To help the struggling East Side neighborhoods Portland has targeted, Jean De Master (last 2 paragraphs below) is right on the money.  Town Centers and neighborhood commercial districts don't create a sense of place or community. You have to get people to want to live in the community and connect to it emotionally and want to stay rather than be transient dwellers.  Parks, sidewalks, improved streets - the kinds of things people are attracted to that make a place nice to live in and call home.  These things you can buy, but you can't create the attachment that people in LO have to their city - the relationships to the place and community that are created over time on a deeper level than new town centers and mixed use developments can ever accomplish.  

City drive adds 'center' to East Portland

Portland Tribune

Thursday, 05 December 2013 06:00 | Written by Steve Law |

Division Street could be a focal point for public investments in East Portland in the next 20 years.  City planners who are updating Portland’s comprehensive land-use plan are floating the idea of making the Midway area around Southeast 122nd Avenue and Division a new “town center.”

A town center, a commercial hub on the scale of St. Johns or the Hollywood district, could give the area a “sense of place” that it now lacks, says Lori Boisen, district manager for the Division Midway Alliance, which is seeking to improve the area.

Though the city’s multiyear update of its comprehensive land-use plan is still a work in progress, Engstrom says two changes on Division loom as perhaps the biggest initiatives in store for East Portland.

The other is a new “neighborhood center” designation for Division and Southeast 82nd Avenue. That area, part of the emerging Jade District, is being transformed by the rapidly expanding Portland Community College campus and an influx of Asian-oriented restaurants, groceries and other business.

Attaching the new neighborhood center label would elevate the status of the pan-Asian Jade District when it comes to setting priorities for city investments.

Nick Christensen, the former chairman of the Lents Neighborhood Association, says the more the city can do to concentrate its investments in key places, the better. “Creating a sense of community for the Powellhurst-Gilbert area has been a huge need in East Portland for a long time,” Christensen says.

“I think what our neighborhoods are asking for is jobs,” says Jean DeMaster, executive director of Human Solutions and a leading advocate for East Portland. DeMaster doesn’t see commercial development occurring very rapidly, even if the city designates the new centers, because residents in the area have low disposable income.

But prioritizing the centers is the right thing to do, DeMaster says, because that could lead to more parks, sidewalks and other infrastructure. “They’re not going to get more middle-income people there unless they build that infrastructure,” she says.

What is Sense of Place?
by Jennifer E. Cross Department of Sociology Colorado State University 

Commodified Relationships. The fifth type of relationship to place is a commodified relationship. The defining characteristic of the commodified relationship is choice, the ability to choose a place with the best possible combination of desirable features. In regards to personal history, commodified relationships have little or nothing to do with personal history. Because they are founded on choice and a list of desirable traits, commodified relationships typically result from dissatisfaction with one community and the quest to find a more desirable place. This relationship is based on the match between the attributes of a place and what a person thinks is an ideal place.

 Commodified relationships are based on the comparison of person’s image of the ideal community with the physical attributes of a community.

These relationships are more cognitive and physical than emotional. In this relationship to place the most significant emotional connections are to things or commodities like upscale restaurants and boutiques, and the natural environment, rather than to the larger community or relationships with other people.

Amenity migrants are the stereotypical example of people with a commodified relationship to place. In this relationship place is a commodity to be consumed, rather than a part of a person’s identity and history or a sacred place. Although many newcomers arrive in Nevada County as amenity migrants, their relationship to place may be transformed over time into a biographical or ideological relationship. If, however, they continue to relate to the place as something to be consumed, newcomers are likely to move to another place if they find a place with a better list of amenities or if it [Nevada County] changes too much and loses the qualities that attracted them to begin with.