By Jack Cumming

Do you remember the story of the emperor’s new clothes? I still laugh at the image of a fat, self-indulgent power maven prancing down the street, preening himself in total nudity. Sometimes it can be difficult to speak truth to power. The people were afraid of the truth lest they be deemed unfit. But a child, too innocent to connive, declared simply, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Word Scramble

That’s how I feel now about the sudden prominence given to “place” by many architects and others who want to sound erudite about the latest parlance. In traditional usage, “place” has a spatial connotation, though it can metaphorically be used for social position, as in “Hudson, the butler, knew his place” for those readers who remember Upstairs Downstairs.

Of course, there are places where one feels at home, and the physical surroundings are part of that. I remember, for instance, living on the Princeton University campus and thinking, “I like it here,” but the beauty of the campus — it is in fact very beautiful — was a minor part of that. I liked living among people who loved ideas as I did then and still do.

Why “Place?”

Where did this new usage of the term “place” come from? The best one can find is that it originated with the 1977 publication of a book titled Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. The author, Yi-Fu Tuan, was born in China and came to the United States at age 21.

That may have affected his usage of English words to describe his academic thinking. He has been called “the father of humanistic geography.”

Unlike his contemporaries, he was fascinated by the idea that places are directly related to emotion — in other words, what he called topophobia and topohilia. Topophobia refers to the fear of places that make people feel unsafe — “landscapes of fear.” Think cemeteries or simply a place where something terrible happened, like an automobile accident or a couple’s breakup.

Topophilia, on the other hand, is a connection to place that we love — a place that makes us feel good, perhaps inspires fond memories.

Ultimately these are very individual, and it is possible for a single place to evoke topophilia for one person and topophobia for another.

I Worry

I worry that this idea of “sense of place” is another fad without substance or meaning. It is part of a word salad that gets tossed around, sounds impressive, and means nothing more than the relationship between people and their physical location (outdoors, indoors, home, hotel … whatever)

Frankly, I prefer simple clarity to such a faddish term. For an academic’s criticism of this use of jargonized language to mask a lack of substance and creativity, click here for a lecture by Professor Branko Mitrovic. Mitrovic is the author of Architecture Principles in the Age of Fraud.

Is this much ado about nothing, much as the term “artificial intelligence” is a misleading term for something that is readily understood if only it is properly explained? It seems as if it is. Some have embraced the terms “place” and “sense of place” for senior living, as though these were attractive properties that could be arrived at by quantitative and social scientific analysis.

Recently the “sense of place” terminology was used to describe a focus group project. Residents in senior living were asked to explain why they love living where they live. The idea was to enhance the experience to improve marketing. Things that were uncovered that needed correction were assigned to local management. When corporate runs the program it gives residents a sense of their place.

Ryan Frederick

Is this the same thing that, say, Ryan Frederick has in mind when he speaks of place? Ryan is a consultant to the senior living industry and the author of the book Right Place, Right Time: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Home for the Second Half of Life. It’s an excellent book with a foreword by Paul Irving. In his book, Mr. Frederick is very specifically focused on the choice of the place where one lives as having a direct impact on well-being and good health.

Explaining his use of “place,” he notes:

Country, region, state, metropolitan area, neighborhood, nearby streets, and physical dwelling all play a role in our health. For example, if your state and metropolitan area are economically challenged, your community may not have the financial resources to support successful aging, such as providing key health care and community services.

He concludes by suggesting that thinking consciously about “place,” meaning the space in which you live, can improve the aging experience. For instance, something as simple as “decluttering” can be liberating. That alone can help if you don’t move to a new place. He gives a whole chapter to staying put. Then, he closes with a chapter on “Selecting a New Place.” Obviously, one such choice can be moving into senior housing.

That’s relevant because he concludes that “implicit is that place is our choice. There may be options that others deem safe or appropriate, but … we have the freedom to choose what’s best for us …. Only you know when place is right.”

Back to Home

Within the senior living industry, Ryan Frederick is the most recognized figure for his embrace of the importance of “place” in this new sense of the word. He’s moved the concept forward from the arcane terminology of topophobia and topohilia. Perhaps it’s time to go just one more step forward and to think of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

Senior living is a people business. The mission is to make people feel comfortable, wanted, and valued even as age takes its inevitable toll. The IRS uses the somewhat archaic term “homes for the aged,” and the English refer to “care homes.” As Dorothy notes, a place can be a home, though it’s the people who make it home. Perhaps we could just go back to the simpler “sense of home.” Either you’ve got it, or you don’t.