ABSTRACT
Mental or cognitive perception of space is defined as a process composed of ‘a series of physiological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in his everyday spatial environment’ (Downs and Stea 1973: 9). Mental processes relate to the inner capacity to literally map the world (Pile 1996). Lee (1968) suggests the schema – a psychological concept that helps in studying human behaviour in space. Head originally defined the schema in 1920 as ‘a model of the pattern of nerve impulses that must be built up in the brain when we carry out any complex movement with our limbs’ (Lee 1968: 97). Lee applies this concept to the definition of a neighbourhood and suggests that the schema of a neighbourhood is built up on a ‘continuous input of sensory information from the physical and social objects in the urban locality, arising from our repeated transactions with neighbours, tradesmen, buildings, bicycles, parks, walls, etc.’ (Lee 1968: 98). I will return to this point later in the chapter in the section dealing with belonging, but before that let us connect these definitions of mental, cognitive perceptions and schemata to the notion of cognitive map.
