Place: A Short Introduction

I'm coming out of a many-year hibernation as regards Amazon reviews to warn you away from this book, and it doesn't give me any pleasure to do so.I was considering it as a basic text for students in my ITP course "Urban Experience in the Networked Age," who are at graduate level, but generally won't have had much in the way of background in geography. I found the notion of a brisk overview of conceptions of place pretty appealing, and still do. And there are, indeed, a lot of things to like in this book -- it functions very well as an annotated bibliography, albeit an expensive one.Why no more than that? Unfortunately, in Cresswell's hands, the mischaracterizations (particularly of Lefebvre and Heidegger) crop up early, continue throughout, and would require so much repair and backfill to correct that in the end it's just not worth my time as an instructor. The mischaracterization of work I am acquainted with was serious enough that I began to doubt Cresswell's gloss on writers and thinkers I wasn't familiar with.There are dozens of typos (among other howlers, Heidegger's Dasein is repeatedly rendered "desein"), sentences go unpunctuated, and beyond matters of copy, the volume stands badly in need of an editor. "Activities and forms of human life and culture which threatened regional and place-based distinctiveness were thus a threat" (p. 18)? You don't say.The tragedy here is that I'm sure Cresswell's aims and goals are largely identical with my own, and I don't think for a second he set out to write a bad book. I really wish I could wave a magic wand and turn "Place" into the book its author and I both clearly wanted it to be, but sadly, that's beyond my abilities.

This is a very academic treatment of "place". The book reminds me of President Clinton saying, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Only a lawyer could parse words so vaguely. The book examines different academic schools of thought of the concept of "place" without actually dealing with "place."The book doesn't even bother to consider the variety of places: urban; rural; suburban; symbolic-cultural; political; transportational; important; unimportant; organized; unorganized; new; mature; old; blighted. . . . . These are important delineations of space -- and make places have meaning. Have you ever been stuck in traffic and realized that you're really just sitting in a large field? You can see trees, sky, birds, land, and air. You just happen to see buildings, asphalt, and impatient grumpy homo sapiens in moving machines, which are now sitting on top of this field. You are in a particular place. Such an ordinary place has been radically transformed, much like child playing in a sandbox.While I wanted to enjoy the book, I was disappointed. The book is not recommended for someone wanting to understand location or geography. Still, the author achieved his goal and stuck to his hypothesis statement, which I can respect, if not enjoy. I will keep it in my library should I need a footnote for some esoteric urban-geography article.

The author has a sense of humor that catches you off-guard when you're reading. This a good book to start off a Rhetoric of Place class, or begin your study of place. Most of the authors referenced in the book are people that I come across again and again in my readings. Great summary book that spans across dozens of lead-aways from discussions of the "other" to being "out of place" and "non-places" etc. Cresswell does a brilliant job of making it all cohesive. I wish he would have added more examples for his chapter on Harvey and Massey, but other than that, he makes some wonderful connections that make it easier to delve into a confusing topic.

I don't agree with everything Cresswell writes, and I think the book tends to crusade too much against some of the thinking of spatial theorists like Harvey and simplifies Lefebvre a ton. That's perhaps because I came at this from a space-perspective rather than a place one. The book takes on a huge topic to break down, and I think that work is going to always cause the kind of problems that one of the reviewers mentioned. I think it's still useful, and I appreciated the approach of this book and the organization of topics. A helpful beginning point.

Cresswell's volume is one of the most helpful for those starting out with discussions of place. He deftly moves between the complexities, central figures, and history of place. Cresswell helpfully summarizes many of the arrayed arguments pointing to differences and similarities. Perhaps one of the most helpful components of the text is the Chapter 5 resources for further study of place including books, papers, journals, other approaches, as well as, student projects and exercises to grapple with concepts and practice of place.

The edge was definitely taken off this book by the incessant use of obscure polysyllabic words instead of simple phrases.It would appear to be an academic paper wrapped in a book cover.If the book had been edited by a non-academic before publication, it would have been greatly improved and would be a more enjoyable read an interested layman such as myself.

Useful for my research!

Amazing for photography