Yi-Fu Tuan’s 1977 masterpiece, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, is one of the handful of books I’ve read in my life that completely changed the way I see the world. I was saddened to hear that the great humanist geographer has died.
Tuan was one of those rare scholars who brought heart and spirit to his intellectual analysis. He sought to understand not only how humans interact with place, but how geography affects our emotions, and even taps into our deepest needs. His thinking was universal, but he never lost sight of the intimate. In fact, it was the human need for intimacy and meaning that he seemed to want to understand most.
Like other great thinkers, he was able to simply define those things most mortals take for granted and leave unexplained. His definition of place, for instance, is remarkable for its sensitivity to human behavior, needs, and emotions.
Place is whatever stable object catches our attention. As we look at a panoramic scene our eyes pause at points of interest. Each pause is time enough to create an image of place that looms large momentarily in our view. The pause may be of such short duration and the interest so fleeting that we may not be fully aware of having focused on any particular object; we believe we have simply been looking at the general scene. Nonetheless these pauses have occurred. It is not possible to look at a scene in general; our eyes keep searching for points of rest. We may be deliberately searching for a landmark, or a feature on the horizon may be so prominent that it compels attention. As we gaze and admire a famous mountain peak on the horizon, it looms so large in our consciousness that the picture we take of it with a camera is likely to disappoint us, revealing a midget where we would expect to find a giant.
The essential formula undergirding Space and Place is so simple, brilliant, and fundamental that the reader understands it instantly at an instinctive level. Tuan was a scholar blessed with the wisdom of a poet. His formula: “Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other.” Human lives, he writes, “are a dialectical movement between shelter and venture, attachment and freedom. In open space one can become intensely aware of place; and in the solitude of a sheltered place the vastness of space behind acquires a haunting presence.”
There’ve been times that I’ve loved or loathed places but was too inarticulate—and likely too insensitive—to pinpoint the source of my reactions. I once spent a total of two weeks at sea in the Roaring Forties of the South Atlantic Ocean. It was dreadful. I found it endlessly boring. Was it because there was nothing to rest my eyes on except perhaps an occasional distant, menacing weather front? And why do I think the barren Namib Desert is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen? Was it because the wind created shapes in the sand that my eyes—and soul—found comfort in? What does my disdain for one place and love for another say about me and what I need from life? Yi-Fu Tuan gave me the language that helps me grapple with my surroundings.
I never met Professor Tuan, but I wanted to. I sent him an email in January 2020, requesting an interview. He responded promptly and generously. We set a date to meet on Tuesday, March 31, of that same year. Then the pandemic happened. I never made that trip to Wisconsin, where I had hoped to meet him at the Starbucks on State Street in Madison where he was a regular. A Starbucks, of all places!
I like to imagine that we talked for hours in one of his favorite places.
