Old Places and Identity

blog.preservationleadershipforum.org/2014/01/08/old-places-matter-identity-1/#.UtQ7wGRDs_7

The Roman Forum
Rome, Italy
jsis.washington.edu

Hello Everyone:

In a post last week about re-considering overused urbanist terms ("Rethinking Overused Urbanist Term" 1/7/14), one of the words that made the list was "place making."  We talked briefly about what the word means and how it got overused.  Today, I'd like to take a different approach to the phrase "place making," by looking at blog post from Tom Mayes.  Based in Rome, Mr. Mayes is a 2013 Rome Prize winner in Historic Preservation from the American Academy.  Mr. Mayes has been contributing blog posts about his research and experience to the Preservation Leadership Forum.  In a post titled "Why Do Old Places Matter?  Individual Identity,"  Tom Mayes, uses the Eternal City as a forum to work out the answers to the question, "Why should anyone care about old places?"  This post focuses on the role of old places and identity.

Ramah Presbyterian Church and Cemetery
Huntsville, North Carolina
cmstory.org

The question of why do we bother with old places is something that Historic Preservationists professionals and fans tackle with all the time.  The phrases: "Old places are who we are;" "They give us a sense of self;"  "They tell who we are as a people." are frequently heard when we talk about why old places are important.  Mr. Mayes spoke with Sofia Bosco the Rome director of Fondo Ambiente Italiano, an Italian preservation organization, who told him, "These places are testimonials of who we are.  They represent the identity of every on of us."  No truer words.  The old places, be it our homes, houses of worship, neighborhoods, schools, main streets, and courthouse squares, are all part of what makes up our identity and who we are as a culture.

Cicero (died c. December 7,  43 BCE)
en.wikipedia.org

The vital connection between identity and old places.  The philosopher Cicero  documented the "indescribable feeling insensibly pervading my soul and sense"(Yonge, 1853) on returning to the place of his birth and where his father and grandfather lived. More recently, architect and preservationist James Marston Fitch wrote, "[preservation] affords the opportunity for the citizens to regain a sense of identity with their origins of which they have often been robbed by the sheer urbanization. (Fitch, 1982).  Like the ancient philosopher, we all have a place, such as our childhood home, that gives a sense of identity.  However, do those old places "tell us who we are?" Tom Mayes asks the question, "What exactly s the relationship between old places and identity?"  In earlier posts (which you can find on http://www.preservationnation.org), Mr. Mayes discussed how old places are critical for people to maintain a sense of continuity and memory.  Identity is closely ties to both continuity and memory, they are part of a whole.  What about individual identity?

For over thirty years, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and architectural theorists from across the globe have studied the connection between place and identity.  Through their studies, they developed a myriad of definitions and processes for looking at the phenomena of "place attachment" and "place identity-"how a person's identity is attached to a place.  Despite the lack of consensus about either definition or process, most of the studies seem to accept the idea that "the use of the physical environment as a strategy for the maintenance of self" is an integral part of identity, and "place is inextricably linked with the development and maintenance of continuity of self." (Twigger-Ross, 1996)  Exactly how places inform out identities and the way we create identity out of place is a complex and multi-layered method, made even more complicated by the lack of agreement about how this is supposed to work.  Turkish architect Humeyra Birol Akkurt provides a useful summary of the multiple scholarly definitions of how identity is tied to a place:

1) "...a set of links that allows and guarantees the distinctiveness and continuity of place in time,"
2) "the bond between people and their environment, based on emotion and cognition,"
3) "...symbolic form that link people and land: links through history or family lineage, links due to loss or destruction of land, economic links such as ownership, inheritance or politics, universal links through religion, myth and spirituality, links through religion and festive cultural events, and finally narrative links through storytelling or place naming..."

Other writers have commented on a sense of pride by association and a sense of self-esteem.  Humeyra Birol Akkurt posited that one scholar theorizes for a given place but there as many different place identities as there place using that place. (Akkurt)

Norwegian architect Ashild Lappegard Hauge sums up a key finding as, "[a]spects of identity derived from places we belong to arise because places have symbols that meaning and significance to use.  Places represent personal memories and...social memories 9shared histories)."  Mr. Hauge concludes, "Places are not only contexts or backdrops, but also an integral part of identity." (Hauge, 2007)  People intuitively recognize how older places represent meaning, significance, and memories.  Yi-Fu Tuan, an influential geographer and pioneer in the study of people's relationship to place wrote, "What can the past mean to us?  People look back for various reasons, but shared by all is the need for tangible objects that can support a sense of identity..." (Tuan, 1977)  However, there is larger idea at work.

Villa Aurelia at the American Academy
Rome, Italy
artsbeat.blog.nytimes.com

According to Tom Mayes, it isn't as if individuals simply decides what there place identity will be.  Some theorists suggest that the relationship between place and identity is inseparable.  Think about that for a minute.  In summarizing the findings of Edward Relph, a geographer who pioneered theories of place, a writer stated, "...the essence of places lies in its largely unselfconscious intentionality, which defines places as profound centres of human existance." (Akkurt, summarizing Relph)  David Seamon restates, Edward Relph's idea, place is "not a bit of space or another word for landscape or ennvironment, it is not a figment of individual experience, not a social construct...It is, instead, the foundation of being both human and nonhuman; experiences, actions, and life itself begin and end with place. ((Seamon, based on Bennet the Role of Place Identity in the Perception, Understanding, and Design of Built Environment). In short, place-identity is not a random act, it is a deliberate conscious choice made by individuals that have lasting effect.

Tom Mayes argues that place identity is a dynamic thing.  It changes over time.  Using himself as an example, Mr Mayes describes growing up on a farm in North Carolina.  His identity is closely tied to that place with its frame farmhouse where he was raised, the cedar trees that lined the fences, and the very quality of the light on the grass in the cow pastures.  However, Mr. Mayes writes that his identity is not only tied to that one place.  His identity is connected to the places where he's lived, worked, visited-his university at Chapel Hill, Washington D.C. where he lived and worked for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to a fifties era fishing cabin in West Virginia.  Mr. Mayes looks hopefully to the future when his identity will be defined, enhanced, expanded, or clarified by his time in Rome or any other places he will come to know.  Although our identity with a place is fluid and can be re-created in different places, the locations that form our identity are the "tangible objects" that support our identity.  If our old places continue to exist, they will serve as reference points for measuring, refreshing, and recalibrating who we are overtime-landmarks of our identity, if you will.

Eastland Mall (demolished)
Charlotte, North Carolina
naplesnews.com

 Again, using himself as an example, Mr. Mayes writes that places which support our identity needn't that old.  He cites the Eastland Mall, opened in 1975, in east Charlotte, North Carolina, a place that was part of his adolescence, demolished this past autumn.  Mr. Mayes writes that thanks to the efforts of community groups such as E.A.S.T and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Preservation Foundation, and the City of Charlotte,  "Rising Sun" logo is being preserved as public art.  The preservation of the sign serves as a memory of a place that once "embodied the spirit of the city." (Gray, 2013)  Mr.  Mayes was glad that the sign was saved but wishes that more of the place remained.  In documentation by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Preservation Society, preservationists wrote that the vacant building evoked beauty that made Mr. Mayes think that his hometown might have been a richer place in the future if they figured out how to reinvent the now demolished mall in way that saved the "tangible object" of his youth.  Would saving the old places make us a more sustainable,stable and humane world?  Maybe.

When buildings become threatened or destroyed, a part of our identity is threatened or destroyed as well.  I'm thinking right now about the destruction wrought by the Syrian civil war.  The places in Damascus and Aleppo are intimately connected with the generations of people and their identities. Dare I say, with the identity of Western and Eastern culture.  Each time a bullet pierces a building or a bomb destroys another house, another part of that identity is erased for good.  One does not have to be in a combat zone to experience such a loss.  Each day, a part of our place identity is lost in some fashion. Sometimes, it can be reconfigured elsewhere but home is always where the heart is.

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