Master of Arts / Department of Geography / John A. Harrington Jr / A question exists on how cultural backgrounds influence the paths students take to understand cultural geography and construct mental maps of their communities. This thesis draws on the interconnections among student multiculturalism, geo-progressions (learning trajectories in geography), and perception of the environment at the community scale. As a result of the Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education, geo-progressions have received increased attention by geography education researchers. The majority of the effort to-date has focused on the first theme of the National Geography Standards: the world in spatial terms (Standards 1-3). This study attempts to deconstruct and rethink a geo-progression by considering multiple paths to learning Geography Standard Six, "how culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions." The study incorporates the concept of community, a major theme for third grade as indicated in the Kansas Standards for History, Government, and Social Studies. During this longitudinal study, students were asked to make mental maps and talk about their community-based sense of place twice during part of the 2015-2016 school year. Third-grade classrooms from four demographically distinct areas of Kansas were surveyed: Manhattan, Garden City, Horton, and Junction City. The first session was conducted in September 2015. In January 2016, the same students were asked to perform the same tasks to assess any temporal differences. Mental maps and interviews were coded and analyzed to assess the spectrum of how students perceive a spatial sense of community over time. Interviews with teachers helped document classroom-to-classroom differences in how the concept of community was incorporated into the teaching effort.

Thesis advisor: George O'Har / In these three longer short stories I explore the theme of "sense of place," of the geographic and psychological confusion of the world and the people in and on it. The first piece, "Cartography," is the story of a woman who, despite living in a large and vibrant city, struggles to find herself within it. The second piece, "The Birds," is the story of a man, Adam, who searches to define himself against the earth and attempts to reject his own embodiment, ultimately failing, but in doing so finds something else. The third piece, "Men Shall Know Nothing of This" (also the title of a Max Ernst painting) is a brief history of a city — and how it continues even when it appears to be dying — past its industrial prime, told through the interactions of four characters with the main road. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis examines the social, political, and economic underpinnings of creating a place for Basque immigrant descendants by the use of the Basque Block in downtown Boise, Idaho. In the past, unlike other immigrant groups in the United States, Basques lacked the desire to assimilate into the US and remained relatively invisible. Simultaneously, they created subtle ethnic communities and maintained transnational sociospatial ties with Basque Provinces in Europe. Today, these transnational ties are stronger, which has profoundly influenced the creation of the Basque Block. The Basques strive to maintain their heritage landscapes to retain their cultural identity and educate present and future generations about their unique legacy. Furthermore, the local community in Boise has recently marketed their heritage landscapes to attract tourists and bring attention to this "invisible" ethnic group. This thesis explores the challenges and opportunities brought on by the production and commodification of an ethnic heritage site.

The focus of this thesis is to emphasise the lived experience of being a migrant, and of living in a multicultural society, and to acknowledge the multi-dimensionality of these experiences. The author conducted interviews with people from ethno-specific community groups in the Sydney suburb of Auburn. These interviews explored the physical, emotional and spiritual aspect of coming to terms with a changing sense of what is home and what is foreign. The tenor of the thesis is strongly optimistic and explores the social ecology of multiculturalism in Australia in the late 1990's, using Auburn, with its strong immigrant population and large Turkish community, as a case study. The contributions by the people of Auburn are woven through the thesis as voices in their own right, rather than as quotations for a line of argument. Social ecology, as a project, works to open up dimensions of awareness and to acknowledge complexity by addressing the physical and sensory levels of individual experience as well as the broader political and social contexts which frame people's lives. The thesis acknowledges that the success of contemporary Australian multiculturalism has something to do with the broad based policies that implement this social phenomenon. More importantly, multiculturalism succeeds because it has become the culture scape in which the soul of the community wanders. This thesis acknowledges that there is something intellectually difficult about the word soul, but there is an ecological value in James Hillman's idea of the soul as not an elevated idea but rather one 'down in the earth'; soul in this sense is about place, finding and taking root in a new place. / Doctor of Philosophy(PhD)

The edge city is often criticized as being a center of placelessness. It is the devaluation and commodification of place in contemporary approaches to urban design and planning that is stifling the prosperity of place identity and subsequently the ability for edge cites to create 'a sense of place'. It is probable that a broadened understanding of the situational context and the role of human experience in place making can suggest alternatives to current practices that reduce place to location. Capturing the essence of place inspires superior strategies for producing place identity and a grasp on the meaning of how recovering ‘a sense of place’ is fundamental in turning edge cities from consumable space into real and lasting places.

For the most part, academic literature neglects the psychological impact of public gardens and the landscape on human well-being. Literature about botanical gardening and urban landscape design provide the foundation of contemporary public gardening practices. Largely overlooked, however, is a discussion of the relevance of such gardens to visitors. Public gardens, however, can play an important role in fostering a sense of place in communities, in both historical and contemporary contexts. In this study, the impacts of such gardens are considered through Canadian experiences using perceptual lenses offered by diverse writers whose work can be found in bodies of literature related to history, geography, non-fiction, and poetry. Concepts such as ‘place-making’ which can foster ‘home-making’, for example, are intriguing and worthwhile areas of inquiry in understanding the role of public gardens in the urban landscape. This research explores the importance of ‘home’ in gardens. It also considers the importance of gardens to an individual’s internal (psychological) and external (social) home, particularly for those currently involved as volunteers at public gardens. The concept is related to stewardship and how being a steward of the garden home is key to being a steward of one’s internal home. The animating question here concerns the role that cultivated gardens might play in an individual’s connection to landscape. This topic is explored through an examination of volunteer programs (popularly known as Friends of the Garden programs) using grounded theory to explore the perceptions and perspectives of volunteers who work in three public gardens in Ottawa, Kitchener, and Toronto, Ontario. The subject of gardens and their interrelationship to people lends itself to an interdisciplinary methodological approach encompassing studies in landscape ecology, geography, history, planning, design, and psychology, among others. The qualitative methods approach used in this thesis involves an in-depth examination of secondary literature, as well as field work involving semi-structured interviews, and narrative methods. Further, this research explores the role these gardens play with respect to the unique Canadian sense of place and well-being found within urban public gardens. The findings of the research reveal differing perspectives of volunteers with respect to “sense-making” and the ways in which they engage with each other and with the urban public gardens where they work. In addition, the findings revealed the crucial role played by the volunteer as stewards of the garden. The volunteers see these gardens as sanctuaries and view their own role as serving the greater good of their communities for reasons that go beyond political and economic considerations; they are based on intrinsic sets of values. The research revealed that volunteers frequently possessed strong connections to childhood experiences spent in natural settings with their families. These experiences helped to stimulate a shared belief amongst gardeners that the very act of gardening is itself a valued and valuable “way of life”. Furthermore, volunteers are often retired and older; as such, they volunteer in the gardens as a way to contribute to the world to make it more beautiful and meaningful for others and to pass those gardens down to future generations. Gardens are seen as ways to re-create home from one’s childhood past; volunteers often link their present experience in the garden with a sense of connection and belonging in similar terms used to describe their home (as a country, a house, or a valued place). These findings demonstrate that there is a strong sense of place that is both acquired and fostered through engagement with urban public gardens. The findings also raise the possibility that public gardens play an important role in fostering sense of place in visitors. This, in turn, can contribute to a sense of home or belonging, and stewardship of communities and natural surroundings. This research contributes to an understanding of the role that public gardens play as valuable places that make important contributions to social and ecological well-being.

No description available.

In this thesis I try to discover the American West in Annie Proulx¡¦s Wyoming Stories. I do so in three chapters, each devoted to a different approach of the stories: chapter one looks at Proulx¡¦s work from the point of view of history, chapter two from that of sense of place, and chapter three looks at the grotesque elements in the Wyoming Stories. While approaching Wyoming Stories with a historical perspective, I discuss how Proulx reverses the stereotypical Western images that have been widely accepted since Frederick Jackson Turner published his ¡§The Significance of Frontier.¡¨ I use historian Patricia Limerick¡¦s historical observations, which discover the intertwined relationship of the mythisized West and American culture, to be my theoretical base to examine how the stereotypes of the American West create a virtual American West while marginalizing the real American West. I argue that Proulx¡¦s Wyoming Stories break the Western myths and suggest that the region has many of its own stories to tell. By presenting an unconventional Western image to readers, the stories also invite new perspectives on the region which may lead more outsiders to see the West without stereotypes. In chapter two, I argue that Proulx¡¦s stories contain a ¡§sense of place¡¨ that does not resemble the joyous topophilic feelings usually associates by that phrase, but that rather, presents complicated relationships between humans and the landscape. By presenting different relationships between humans and landscapes in her Wyoming stories, Proulx also exposes urban-rural conflicts that result from an urban living style that turns away from landscapes and ¡§the world out there.¡¨ However, as the urban pushes the rural far away, Proulx suggests that the rural, also rejects the urban. Nevertheless, I argue that, Proulx establishes in her stories a communal path for both sides with her sense of place that stresses that ¡§everything is linked.¡¨ In the third chapter, I turn to the grotesque to discuss Proulx¡¦s writing style and how this style leads the readers into the inner culture of Wyoming that is itself grotesque and full of contradictions. I also argue that with the form of grotesque, Proulx¡¦s stories weave complex and challenging texts that often confuse and challenge readers so that they have to constantly work with the stories, questioning them as well as their own experiences and knowledge in order to make sense out of the stories. And such a process not only allows the readers to, again, connect to a Wyoming or American West that does not exist in the stereotypes, but also provides a chance for readers to see conflicts, struggles, and grotesques in themselves and their own cultures.

The social and neurosciences are moving toward a conceptualization of the psychological construct of sense of place in relation with spatial cognition, place imageability, and meaning. To help advance progress, this dissertation proposes a conceptual framework of sense of place that includes variables of spatial navigational strategy (i.e., egocentric and allocentric) and place imageability using notions of edges, paths, landmarks, districts, nodes. Three studies using different methods tested the proposed framework. Study 1 used a questionnaire and an interview-based protocol analysis to examine whether navigational strategy associated with participants’ levels of sense of place for recalled urban neighbourhoods. Preliminary work investigating whether sense of place and spatial navigation varied with place imageability was also done using qualitative analyses. Participants used more egocentric and allocentric strategies during cognitive map navigation when sense of place was stronger compared to when they recalled places for which they felt weak or neutral levels of sense of place. Seven categories were revealed from participants’ qualitative descriptions of urban place visualizations after completing three sense of place scales (i.e., home-sense, compactness, environment, safety, vibrancy, design, and aesthetics) and differed depending on sense of place condition. Study 2 enabled participants to articulate recollections of settings for which they felt different strengths of sense of place via a cognitive mapping task. Results reinforced the notion that individuals who experience a strong level of sense of place for an urban environment also recall more of the physical features that make it imageable. Existing literature was confirmed by this study’s results that paths and landmarks are integral to urban place imageability. Study 3 gathered information about community members’ current representations of their urban neighbourhood. Results supported hypotheses based on results of Studies 1 and 2. Nodes, edges, and landmarks were found to be particularly meaningful to residents’ spatial understanding of their neighbourhood. The fact that more allocentric strategies than egocentric strategies were used in each of the three place imageability conditions (compared to non-significant differences in sense of place conditions in Study 1) highlights compelling future research questions concerning the three variables of the proposed conceptual framework of sense of place. Similar to Study 1, qualitative analyses in Study 3 revealed paths as the predominant meaningful place imageable feature noted by residents. Thematic information about the features in each area reported to have meaning for residents indicate the categories of environment, aesthetics, and design as most prevalent. As a whole, this dissertation can inform future environmental psychology research, as well as the practices of urban planners, as they consider spatial navigation and place imageable attributes in relation to the psychological construct of sense of place in urban environments. Planners and researchers alike may benefit from this dissertation as they respond to human spatial needs while facilitating a sense of attachment and identity toward, and compatibility with, city spaces. Finally, findings may assist social scientists in clarifying how sense of place develops in urban neighbourhoods, and how it is experienced over time. / Graduate

Immigration is important to Canada and Canadian society in many ways. Leading the G8 group of countries with the highest proportion of foreign-born population, immigrants make up an important part of the Canadian economy and society (Statistics Canada, 2013). As noted by several authors, much of the literature surrounding newcomer settlement concentrates on either young children or adults, leaving a gap in research into settlement experiences of adolescents (Anisef & Kilbride, 2003; Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006; Janzen & Ochocka, 2003; Omidvar & Richmond, 2003). The purpose of this research project is to explore important community places, themes around settlement, and welcoming communities with newcomer youth in the context of stories surrounding maps of their community. The data were collected as part of a larger project exploring engagement of traditionally underrepresented groups in community-based planning practices. Over the course of the three-day African-Canadian Youth Leadership Project in 2011, thirteen immigrant youth participated in leadership and research activities. The current study focuses on data gathered through a cognitive mapping exercise conducted as part of that larger project. Through thematic narrative analysis of interview transcripts, videos, and maps, major themes of home and family, social places, and support networks emerged as being connected to important places in the context of settlement and the perception of a welcoming community. Issues of safety and exclusion were also raised in participants??? stories. These themes are explored as they connect to place, which grounds a discussion of family connections, social capital, and third places contributing to newcomers??? sense of place, and therefore their experience of places in the community. The importance of bridging social capital is also illustrated, including the links to places in the community that share characteristics of Oldenburg???s (1999) third places. Leisure settings were prominent examples of such places in newcomer youth???s stories and maps, often as context for social learning, language skill development, and fostering social connections. Findings show support for Seat???s idea of settlement as being conceived of full engagement in the host society, as well as the feeling of fitting in (2000). Potential benefits of this and similar research include a greater understanding of newcomer youth settlement experiences, contributing to theory and grounding the settlement experience in the concept of place. Issues of bridging social connections and the importance of the community???s role in newcomer engagement might facilitate policy and planning considerations for creating welcoming communities and community places.