Towards revealing the sense of place: An intuitive “reading” of four Dalmatian towns

Abstract

Places and people are inseparable.1 Places exist only with reference to people, and the meaning of place can be revealed only in terms of human responses to the particular environment used as a framework for daily living. In their behavior in places, people reveal, but do not necessarily articulate, their preferences. Whether creating environments as "insiders" or be- coming familiar with these environments as "outsiders," people identify with or feel alienated from places.2 The key question is how in a practical way one recognizes "sense of place," which in many ways is intangible. How can one clarify and interpret the essential qualities underlying the uniqueness of place and consequently understand a basis for identity? This chapter takes a uni-directional approach in dealing with people and places by treating the latter as a product of former. While it is true that places understood as 'meanings', i.e. in terms of what they come to mean symbolically and materially, depends on what people of them, it is also true that places have meanings of their own that are sedimented over time that give places an aura and meanings that are seperate from, if not wholly independent, what people come to think about those places. This will be an interesting chapter in case you wish you to understand how people come to make mental maps of the places where they find themselves - these mental maps are a combination of affect and understanding, which reflects both on how people relate to places and what these places are in themselves.