By Gerard van Keken

Inspiring places are places that make people breathe in, because ‘inspirare’ means ‘to breathe into’ (see part IV). There are also places that make you breathe out. Or rather, places that make you ‘sigh’? These are the uninspiring places. Several authors have written books about places that make you sigh. One of the authors is Edward Relph who wrote Place and Placelessness in 1976. According to Relph there was a possibility of a placeless geography, lacking both diverse landscapes and significant places. This also implied that we were then subjecting ourselves to the forces of placelessness and were losing our sense of place (Relph, p.79). How right he was and still is, even though the use of the word globalization was, in those days, yet a rarity. Relph wrote that placelessness is a widespread attitude and an expression of that attitude which was becoming increasingly dominant (p. 80). The evidence of this attitude is spread around us: shopping malls, attraction parks, office and business centres, highways, mass housing areas, industrial parks. They often make you sigh, moan or even cry. Placelessness is about places without meaning. According to Arefi (1999, p.184) it is modernism that disrupts the emotional attachment to place. But before you accuse me of being an anti-modernist, yes of course I cherish also the good things that modernism offers, such as reasoning (well, some reasoning), the autonomy of humans instead of their depency on God, (the good things of) ideologies, and the ideas and products that came out of this.

In his introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity Augé, in 1995, wrote more or less a variation on placelessness: non-places. Augé defines places as relational, historical and concerned with identity. If places cannot be defined as mentioned then they are non-places (p.77). Non-places are places where you don’t feel at home, comfortable. How is it possible that we have created so many places that miss the human scale? Even though I am not the first person to raise this question, it does not mean that it should not be put forward again. Non-places are also one of the topics in Ritzer’s book: The globalization of Nothing (2004). He writes about non-places, non-persons, non-things and non-services. I would like to add one new non-issue to this: non-events; events without any meaning. Nothing wrong with entertainment, but we have gone too far in this so-called experience economy, in which so many things are ‘staged’. The conclusion in all these non-world things is that the essential part which is missing is the human aspect again. It is so simple that we seem to have forgotten this.

Forgotten what then? What is this human aspect, this human touch? Well, it is not that easy to write that down, because it is, primarily, a feeling. A feeling that you are comfortable, that you feel at home. That your eyes don’t get lost, but can make contact with other people and beautiful surroundings, buildings. Not this feeling of alienation, which gets to you when you walk alone in car-designed places. That you have the chance to meet others. That you do not feel the wind which high buildings cause and smell nothing but brick and mortar, which means you smell nothing at all. Hear the rumour of other people, see them sitting, drinking, eating, playing, getting together and not the sounds of silence because people are working in their offices or have left to go home. It has to do with planning and the division of functions. That is what makes me sigh. But of course there is hope, because we can still always go back to those many places that make you inspirare!

Arefi, M.(1999). Non-place and Placelessness as Narratives of Loss: Rethinking the Notion of Place. In: Journal of Urban Design. Vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 179-193.
Augé, M. (1995). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London & New York: Verso Books.
Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Ritzer, G. (2004). The Globalization of Nothing. London: Sage Publications.