Placelessness of place: an examination of the loss of place in designing contemporary urban spaces

Abstract

The knowledge that people had of the places in which they lived is being lost. There is increasing ignorance of geography, whether international, national, or local, accompanied by an ephemeral commitment to their home places. Modern bonds to places are declining in the contemporary urban society. Places are becoming less meaningful, they have lost their identity, once used to establish exciting places. The interrelationship of people and place parting; enforcing deterioration of the public realm, injecting "placelessness" in the locale. Modern cities all over the world are in a serious plight: resulting from the above. Cities were meant for the people in the past. Why shouldn't it be so today? the street, the most important aspect of urban design, as a linkage of all scales of interaction are being invaded adversely by the automobile, thus setting the nature for going through, not for staying in. Other forces at work in modern society may do additional damage to feelings of being-in-place. Mass media, consumerism and intentional styles of architecture cause of homogenization of culture makes many urban places similar in material form through symbolization that is not tied to local culture. A sense of "dwelling" is often lacking in that the wholeness of place has become fractured. Modern landscape and cityscape tend to create environment without significant places. The study examines the concepts and definitions of places as against the causes for placelessness" in its preliminary chapters. It will investigate to the adverse factors which results in contemporary urban places. It focuses on the social and physical contexts, which forms an urban culture and the experiences of it. It will concentrate on the morphological structures of the built fabric of the urban form and its relationship with people. The study is further focused on the relationship of man to the street, its activities and his movement patterns, and how he perceives it as a place in-order to determine "placelessness" in the city; in terms of the built fabric, the streets and the waterfronts; a wasted resource to make a place. The study will reveal the nature of successful urban places and how it could be materialized by enhanced design vocabularies, reinforced by better guides for urban designs a holistic approach.