placecentered
Placecentered is a term used in geography, anthropology, education, and urban planning to describe approaches that foreground the significance of specific places in understanding social, cultural, and environmental phenomena. A placecentered perspective treats place as more than a mere location; it encompasses identity, memory, landscape, and the dynamic relationships among people and their environments.
Origins and usage: The term draws on traditions of place-based education, sense of place, and cultural geography.
Principles and methods: Core features include locality, embeddedness, and situated knowledge; participatory and co-creative processes with
Applications: In education, placecentered pedagogy integrates local environments and community voices into curricula; in urban planning
Criticism and challenges: Critics caution that placecentered approaches can risk parochialism or essentializing communities, may underplay
See also: sense of place; place-based education; cultural geography; placemaking.