ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the opposition of place to technological networks and systems needs to be rethought. It examines how place has been positioned against technological infrastructure, and against other landscape elements like space, streets, and roads. The chapter analyses how infrastructural systems, both streets and roads and also their mechanized progeny in the form of aircraft and electric transmission, have played a critical role in the construction of places pre-modern and modern. A place marked by immobility, with negligible trade, travel, or information dynamics, without changing densities of people, would accrue virtually none of the exalted experiential qualities touted in the discourse on place. Industrialization accelerated the growing scale of cities and positioned place with respect to rapidly evolving and mechanized technological systems. The circulation of words, images and numbers regarding place has expanded its presence beyond the limits of site and any single culture.
