Stories

Landscape with Two Trees — Jane Westrick

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What role does Place play in the development, formation and maintenance of our identity?

Place identities tie each of us to a physical location as well as influence our behavior and thinking with societal and ideological beliefs that exist there. Differences between places are inherent or perceived by inhabitants living in or outside of those places.

It is not something easily shaken or lost as we shift places, and is often embodied in our everyday lives based on our personal and societal histories. As a mark left, a scar or imprint.

In place making, ethical and social tensions that form relationships between culture and place are common. We react to our physical and constructed environment and form regional vocabularies.

In any location, the people shape the environment and in turn the environment shapes the people.

This is exemplified and carried in behaviors, idioms, structures, aesthetics, reactions, pleasures, stressors, rebellions, revolutions, portraiture, disbeliefs, biases, love, divisions, individuality and our vernacular.

We all have a story. And our stories each have a setting, sometimes many.