ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on environmental serendipity—unexpected events and situations arising because of happenstance encounters in place. In Life Takes Place, I called this environmental serendipity place release. Through unexpected actions, events, and situations in place, people are “released” more deeply into themselves. Partly because of surprises happening in place, “life is good” as when one meets an old friend on the sidewalk or notices by chance a street poster advertising a neighborhood coffeehouse reading by a local poet one admires. Importantly, release can also unsettle place when serendipitous events happen that are inappropriate, distressing, threatening, or deadly—for example, an older man is mugged in his own neighborhood. In this chapter, I probe place release by considering journalistic and cinematic descriptions of two contrasting modes of place serendipity, one felicitous, the other ill-starred: on one hand, meeting one’s life partner because of happenstance encounter in place; on the other hand, losing one’s life because of happenstance encounter in place. My aim is to better understand what place release entails and how both human and environmental aspects contribute to its role in the life of places.
