Geographers have long spoken of the importance of place as the unique focus distinguishing geography from other disciplines. Astronomy has the heavens, History has time, and Geography has place. A major question that geographers must sooner or later ask, however, is “What exactly is place?” Is it merely a synonym for location, or a unique ensemble of nature and culture, or could it be something more?

Beginning in the early 1970s, geographers such as Yi-Fu Tuan (1974), Anne Buttimer (1976), and Edward Relph (1976, 1981, 1993) grew dissatisfied with what they felt was a philosophically and experientially anemic definition of place. These thinkers, sometimes called “humanistic geographers,” probed place as it plays an integral role in human experience. One influential result of this new approach was Edward Relph’s Place and Placelessness, a book that continues to have significant conceptual and practical impact today, both inside and outside geography.