Why Place Matters

Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America

Wilfred M. McClay, Ted V. McAllister

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781594037184
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of "place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life.Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society.The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION: WHY PLACE MATTERS (MCCLAY)

1 Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1971), 289.

2 The sculpture was installed in 2005 by artists Steve Gillman and Katherine Keefer, as part of the “Gateway Series” of public art commissioned by the Berkeley Civic Arts Commission. “The South Berkeley Gateway Project,” Official Web Site of the City of Berkeley, California, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentPrint.aspx?id=19660.

3 Carolyn Jones, “Berkeley: No tea cozy for ‘There’ sculpture,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2010, available at www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-No-tea-cozy-for-There-sculpture-3263028.php.

4 Verlyn Klinkenborg, “Remembered Spaces,” New York Times, July 17, 2007, A20, available at www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/opinion/17tue4.html.

5 Ibid.

6 Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order: 1877–1920, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967), xiii.

7 William Leach, Country of Exiles (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 30.

8 Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind, trans. Arthur Wills (New York: Routledge, 2001), originally published as L’Enracinement: prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l’être humain (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1949).

9 George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 157.

GPS AND THE END OF THE ROAD (SCHULMAN)

1 Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Penguin, 1999, orig. 1957), 110.

2 Randall Stross, “When GPS Confuses, You May Be to Blame,” New York Times, September 1, 2012, BU3, www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/technology/gps-and-human-error-can-lead-drivers-astray-digital-domain.html.

3 Berg Insight, “GPS and Mobile Handsets: Summary,” LBS Research Series 2013, www.berginsight.com/ReportPDF/Summary/bi-gps4-sum.pdf.

4 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (San Diego: Harcourt, 2002, orig. 1939).

5 Dire Straits, “Tunnel of Love,” Making Movies, 1980, Vertigo.

6 Michael Gormley, “NY State Seeks to Crack Down on Wayward Truckers,” Associated Press, October 14, 2009.

7 “Swedish Tourists Miss Island Due to GPS Typo,” Associated Press, July 28, 2009.

8 Jeff Barnard, “Couple Stranded 3 Days After GPS Leads Them Astray,” Associated Press, December 29, 2009.

9 Gilly Leshed, et al., “In-Car GPS Navigation: Engagement with and Disengagement from the Environment,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2008: 1675–1684, doi:10.1145/1357054.1357316.

10 Thomas A. Ranney, “Driver Distraction: A Review of the Current State-of-Knowledge,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2008, available at www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/NRD/Multimedia/PDFs/Crash%20Avoidance/2008/810787.pdf.

11 Brit Susan Jensen, Mikael B. Skov, and Nissanthen Thiruravichandran, “Studying Driver Attention and Behaviour for Three Configurations of GPS Navigation in Real Traffic Driving,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010: 1271–1280, doi:10.1145/1753326.1753517.

12 “SatNav Danger Revealed: Navigation Device Blamed for Causing 300,000 Crashes,” Mirror News, July 21, 2008, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/satnav-danger-revealed-navigation-device-319309.

13 “Navigation Systems Seriously Undermine Road Safety,” Stichting Onderzoek Navigatiesystemen (Navigation System Research Foundation), December 10, 2007, www.stichtingonderzoeknavigatiesystemen.nl/_files/son_nav001_20071210_en_Navigation_systems_seriously_undermine_road_savety.pdf.

14 Giuseppe Iaria, et al., “Cognitive Strategies Dependent on the Hippocampus and Caudate Nucleus in Human Navigation: Variability and Change with Practice,” Journ...