ABSTRACT
This is a book about place formation, about places in states of becoming. One
could say this does not exclude much because all places are in a state of continu-
ous change. Yet so much of the thinking about ‘place’ treats it as a somewhat
static concept. Places are identified with what does not change; their ‘sense of
place’, ‘character’ or ‘identity’ is seen as relatively stable. Places are experienced
primarily in terms of stabilized contexts of everyday life and they are a primary
means by which we stabilize our identities in that world. Yet just as human iden-
tities are in a continuous process of change, I am interested here in the various
ways in which places come into being. By this I do not mean what often passes
for placemaking – the conscious attempts of designers to create a sense of place
which so easily end up as manipulative corporate formulae or nostalgic ideolo-
gies written rather literally into space. And I do not mean a quest for an essence
of place based in a primordial past. I am interested in an immanent theory of
place that is not abstracted from its instances in everyday life, nor deferred to a
presumed deeper or higher source.
