Place Representation and Place Communication – A Challenge for Geographical Information Science, University of Helsinki, Aalto University, 21.5.2024
Places form an integral part of our everyday lives. We live them as a home, as a workplace, and in many other ways. Place-making, that is, the process that generates places, regularly involves the representation and communication of places; places could otherwise not be socially constructed. The seminar talk addresses the diversity and heterogeneity of such place representations by means of corresponding examples, in order to then identify and analyse different types of place representations. Among these are the modes of ‘natural representation’ and ‘representation-as’. The latter is of particular interest as it establishes genres of place representations, such as the genre of touristic place representations. The talk will conclude with an outlook on the Corpus of Place Representations, which is currently under development and will enable further empirical studies of place representations.