Human Geography: From Sense of Place to Spatial Justice
The Concept of Place in Cultural Geography
In Cultural Geography, the concept of “place” is more than a set of coordinates on a map. In the 1970s, Human Geography emerged as a strong reaction against the quantitative “spatial space” of the 1950s and 1960s, which viewed space merely as an abstract. Human Geographers argued that a place is a meaningful site that combines three crucial elements: location, locale, and sense of place. Through human experience, perception, and emotional attachments, an abstract space is transformed into a lived, humanized place. Edward Relph defined the strongest sense of place as “existential insideness,” which is the profound feeling of being truly at home within a community.
The Crisis of Place and the Rise of Non-Places
However, massive socio-cultural transformations following World War II affected how urban environments are made and experienced. The rise of the modernist architectural paradigm, mass suburbanization, and globalization led to a crisis of the traditional concept of place. Relph introduced the concept of “placelessness” to describe the weakening of place identity. This is visible in the global spread of identical commercial strips and multinational corporate chains. Similarly, anthropologist Marc Augé identified the rise of “non-places” as the real measure of our supermodern time. These types of places are used for transport, commerce, or leisure, such as airports and highways. Unlike traditional anthropological places, non-places don’t stimulate organic identity or shared history. People within non-places interact with the space merely as passing visitors.
Dynamic Processes and Social Thickness
Despite these early pessimistic views, later geographical developments in the 1980s and 1990s argued that collective experience continues to redefine place, rather than erase it. Places are dynamic processes constructed out of a particular group of social relations meeting at a specific site. Furthermore, David Kolb argued that even apparently anonymous suburban sprawls are real human places. Their unity does not rely solely on spatial proximity, but rather on “social thickness,” shared norms, and expectations. As Edward Relph himself later noted in his “paradox of place,” contemporary places have become an inevitable combination. Ultimately, a place is never just a geographical location; it is an ongoing, dynamic process merged together by human meaning, social networks, and collective experiences that constantly adapt to the flows of a globalized world.
Urban Landscapes as Political Arenas
In Cultural Geography, the urban landscape is never a neutral backdrop or a simple street grid. Instead, space is an active political way that shows and reproduces social inequalities. The arrangement of any city—where people live and work—is a simple expression of economic, social, and political power. This perspective introduces the concept of “geographies of difference,” highlighting how privileges and disadvantages are unevenly distributed across a city. Consequently, urban environments are frequently defined by deep socio-spatial segregation.
Spatial Injustice and the Social Product
Systemic historical and economic forces structure the city so that affluent populations often enjoy well-connected, rich areas with optimized mobility. Meanwhile, marginalized and vulnerable communities are frequently pushed into neglected peripheries or degraded urban spaces. In this context, elements like daily mobility, infrastructure quality, and housing become direct indicators of socio-economic status. The spatial design of the city says who has access to opportunities and who is excluded, proving that the physical landscape is structured to benefit certain dominant groups while isolating others. To truly understand why this spatial inequality exists, we must take into consideration Henri Lefebvre. He argues that space is fundamentally a “social product.” Under a capitalist system, urban space is intentionally designed by those in power to facilitate capital accumulation and maintain class hierarchies.
Reclaiming the Right to the City
Affluent areas are produced as spaces of privilege, leisure, and consumption. However, marginalized areas are treated as peripheral products of this system, effectively mapping poverty and discrimination. Space, therefore, is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but organized for social management and control. This spatial injustice brings us to the concept of the “Right to the City.” Urban segregation demonstrates that vulnerable communities are systematically denied this basic right. For Lefebvre, the right to the city is not just the right to visit existing urban spaces or consume their resources; it is the democratic power of all inhabitants to participate in, reshape, and appropriate the city according to human needs. Ultimately, cultural geography teaches us that space is naturally political. The physical composition of the city serves as a tool that can empower or oppress, and recognizing that space is socially produced by unequal power dynamics is the essential first step toward reclaiming the Right to the City.