The People, Place, and Space Reader

Abstract

Space is not an aseptic dimension: it is an experience that brings together physical, ideal, and emotional elements shaping individual and communal perceptions of being in the world.This expanded understanding of space is the result of a debate that emerged in the late nineteenth century and bloomed after the Second World War.However, this understanding has not percolated into common development planning; even today, the spatial dimension is often overlooked by researchers and professionals designing and implementing development initiatives.The definition of space remains limited to an ensemble of geographical coordinates that locate a particular place in a map of the world.In so doing, the key human experience that is built on sensorial perception, affective and intellectual interpretations, and public and private, individual and collective narratives of interaction with space are left out.The People, Place and Space Reader allows the reader to appreciate the rich cultural debate that shaped the social sciences in the past century and marked the passage from modernism to post-modernism.