Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University

Indiana became a "place" to me in the mid-50's. I took my first solo interstate trip on a Greyhound bus from Washington, Pennsylvania to Indianapolis to visit a childhood friend. In those days going west from Pennsylvania meant traveling on U.S. Route 40, the National Road. Before interstates, roads had meaning. My great grandfather Hoover was a drover on the National Road, my mother's home was just east of Searights Tavern, we took it east to my father's homeplace in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania. Pioneer Mothers Monument was near my home. The history of westward migration could still be seen along the road in the 1950's.

After passing through hundreds of stop lights in Columbus, Ohio a sense of foreboding came over me. I had studied the road map before leaving. I knew the road went directly west from Columbus to Indianapolis, but I wondered how people in the flat land knew where they were. How'd they move about this landscape without getting lost? Back home there were hills on the horizon to provide direction. Valleys were well defined, connected the landscape, and had names. These names were based on geography, things on the ground, not political survey lines.

I remember traveling through Indiana between fence rows. The rows were green, not just wire. They visually defined the landscape. Father told me of the rich soil and prosperous farms here. Many of his father's cousins moved here in the mid 1800's for that reason. Looking over the fence rows and down the lanes I knew he was right. The hot breeze blowing in the bus windows smelled of the country, mostly hogs. As the descendent of a long line of Pennsylvania Dutchmen I knew hogs meant wealth. But, here the odor was stronger, almost overwhelming on a hot July afternoon. In the Cumberland Valley hogs were out behind the barn. They were mostly butchered on the farm for home consumption. A few were sold on the hoof. I guessed that here they fed hogs to feed city folks.

My friend's home was in a big suburb. I couldn't follow a ridge as we traveled from the downtown bus terminal to his parent's home. I had no idea where we were relative to anything. The next day I realized we could ride bikes for miles without having to push them up a hill. I noticed streams off in the brush. The vegetalion looked about the same. I noticed that the country roads were laid out like streets in a town, only further apart. On the ground at bicycle speed I could make sense of this place. But, I still wished I could get up somewhere high enough to look down and see how things laid. After 22 years in Indiana I still harbor this urge. Hills were programmed into me as a child. They are important to how I define place. Upon returning to Pennsylvania I realized I had the capacity to make sense of a different place. I learned that making sense of a place was personal. My friend who grew up in the midwest thought of hills as obstacles, not reference points. A given place isn't the same place to everyone.

PLACE IS IMPORTANT

The physical environments in which we are reared, educated, work and raise our families have a significant effect on who we are - our personalities, what we do for recreation, our aesthetic values. Some places allow us to feel relaxed, safe, in touch with ourselves and the physical environment around us. David Bower in the foreword to "A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Landscape" puts it this way: "The places that we have roots in, and the flavor of their light and sound and feel when things are right in those places, are the wellsprings of our serenity." (Gussow, 1972, p. t4) Some places make us feel insecure, cause us to tune out the people around us, to lose touch with our physical environment. The impact of places is readily apparent when we move quickly from home to an unfamiliar place, say Harlem in New York City. But what's the impact on our sense of place from gradual changes to familiar places?

Land use planning doesn't work if it's the planning of land uses. The process must be the planning of places. If we plan simply to efficiently accommodate the physical things to be located on the landscape, we are likely to violate the senses of those whose spirits are part of the landscape, the stakeholders in the landscape. Native American cultures associated the spirits of their ancestors with certain places. Many western movies have portrayed the conflict between this sense of place and manifest destiny. But the contrast is not absolute. The tradition of sanctifying particular places by burying our dead there is prehistoric and remains central to Judeo-Christian cultures. (Harris, 1992)

We must somehow help the leaders of our counties define the role "place" plays in the economic, social, and personal lives of their constituents. It may also be necessary to define the places of the county as sensed by visitors. What places are they willing to pay to experience? Tourism is in essence selling a sense of place, an experience visitors don't get at home.

Wildlife or cows don't have or need a sense of place. Land to wildlife or cows is habitat. But, a sense of place by definition melds people and land. It's even difficult to separate memorable interpersonal experiences from the place they occurred. One of my most indelible childhood memories is my sweating father carrying me on his back to introduce me to his favorite pastime, trout fishing. He carried me on his back in many other places, but the context of a trout stream was completely different to me. Memories of going piggyback to the central business district, or across the muddy field to his garden plot have faded. The impact is due in part to the trout stream compared to my "dirty" river valley home town. It's also that I sensed my father was doing something important with me. We can't think of place without thinking about it in context with some human activity.

I should now warn you of a fundamental communications barrier between us, between you and many of my colleagues in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. My perception is that you're primary job is to "read" people. In my department our primary job is to read the land. You see land primarily as the agent that provides a living for the residents of your county. We see people as the agents driving changes in the landscape. As a social scientist, it's my job to link my colleague's land focus to your people focus.

SAVE THE PARTS BY ALLOWING THE WHOLE TO ADJUST

I don't expect the citizens of your county to expend their limited resources to save forests, wetlands, prairies, and other individual components of a landscape merely for the intrinsic value of these places. The Endangered Species Act and other environmental programs use a command and control approach which created barriers to cooperative conservation activities. This is a major theme in Managing Land As Ecosystems and Economy (1995). My colleagues recognize that you can't manage working landscapes without working with the people working on the landscape. Landowners must be major actors in creating and implementing solutions.

My thesis proposes that these places, which I collectively call wild lands, along with pastures, crop lands, suburbs, cities, and backyards are pieces of a whole thing, a living landscape, or ecosystem. Each piece exists in context, a bigger place into which it fits, or if done wrong, doesn't fit. I believe that even though any given landowner may be able to justify eliminating their wild places, if every woods and every fence row in your county are eliminated, the spirit of the place would change. The citified would notice. Other landowners would notice.

Many people can sense when something is wrong with a landscape, at least if it's a healthy enough landscape to allow people to be in touch with it. Long-time farmers do this instinctively. They notice when the birds stop singing and wonder why. Environmental education achieves its highest level when it allows us to sense when something is wrong with the land.

A landscape has a subtle "language," analogous to our body language. Goleman (1995) describes an emotional intelligence which uses body language as a primary sensory input. Our sense of place is similarly based on primordial instincts or intelligence that over the centuries has allowed us to thrive as a species. Schama (1995) uses art and literature to trace how woods, water, and rock, the elements of place, influenced the cultural roots of western man. Hiss (1990) cites studies identifying instinctive preferences for certain landscape features.

WHAT IS A SENSE OF PLACE?

The easiest way to become acquainted with the concept of 'a sense of place" is from literature portraying writers' feelings about places. Michael Martone describes the effect of flatness on people in his essay in a collection titled Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest (Martone, 1988). This is an example of how literature can help you define a sense of place for your county. Jones and Thom (1995) use photography and stories of people returning to the land of their ancestors to portray the spirit of southern Indiana's hill country. Allen and Schlereth (1990) collected essays portraying differences in regional cultures based on place. This type of literature is story-telling, easily accessible to readers of all backgrounds. No doubt the librarians in your communities could help you identify literature dealing with the places important to residents of your county.

A body of academic literature defines a sense of place and the role of place in more precise terms. Frequently basic principles are presented, many of which serve as the foundation of landscape architecture. Steele (1972) is an example of the literature relating specific aspects of mostly urban environments to specific human behaviors, such as stepping out of the way to stop and watch other people, Jackson (1994) does the same thing for a more rural environment. Bunce (1994) lays out the landscape preferences of a specific ethnic type, Anglo-Americans.

Simultaneous perception involves the five senses, plus a combination of these senses which create in essence additional senses. For example, we can sense our physical surroundings in the dark based on heat radiating from objects, vibrations of the surface we're standing on, echoes, and other signals. Hiss argues that regardless of what we're doing at any particular moment simultaneous perception is providing us with subconscious information about orientation, defense, sustenance, stimulation, and survival. All these have to do with our sense of well being. A "healthy landscape" makes us feel good, and more productive in all aspects of our lives. They also help us sense what it is we have in common with all the life around us - people of course, but also all plants and animals.

MY PLACE VS. OUR PLACES

Scale is an obstacle to planning places. We deal with place on a scale different from what we experience individually. Midwesterners are most comfortable thinking in terms of "my place." Place is idiosyncratic, at lease in comparison to say a western cattleman whose place is a vast range, most of which may be leased from the federal government. Or, in comparison to an urbanite whose place is an array of public streets, sidewalks, and other public settings.

The typical landowner believes they should control what happens on "their place." It should be no one else's business what they do on "their place." They extend this privilege to other landowners. This focus on "my place" is rooted in the pioneering spirit that drove man westward to be able to own "their place." On my place I am free to be or do what I want. Being in control of my place provides perspective. This is a big country. Focusing on my place gives a sense of security, of possibly being able to understand and handle my little piece of this big country. This is an important part of the property rights issue I believe. It's the sense of freedom that "my place" provides.

Midwesterner's sense of place is Cartesian; my place exists on a grid of squares on a map and a grid of roads on the ground. My place, my forty, lies within one of these grids. Should it matter how my place relates to other's places? It must, if we hope to develop consensus for land use planning, for watershed planning, for ecosystems management. How can we help owners of "my place" realize that to some greater or lesser degree, what they value in "their place" is determined by the characteristics of other owners "my place." A big part of the solution to the property rights issue is redefining the meaning of property lines in the minds of properly owners.

"Our places" are viewed differently. Community property in Indiana is historically tied to truly basic community needs. We need a town to shop in, a church to worship in, a town square to meet in. My property and community property traditionally have sharp borders. You expect to literally go through a gate to get to community property. Effective land use planning will require a blurring of these lines,, a blending of uses. Connecting the landscape with corridors is fundamental to effective planning. Corridors must cross property lines. The development of water rights is an example of how property rights accommodate the need for flows through a corridor.

A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE FOR LANDSCAPES

With rare exception residents of Indiana acknowledge by their actions the necessity of behaving according to societal norms. A society couldn't function otherwise. An individual's personal freedom and happiness are maximized within the reality of social conditions by doing so. The socialization process we go through as children accomplishes this. Children's perception of themselves goes from being essentially indistinguishable from their mother to acknowledgement of their roles as citizens.

A woman or ideally a couple doesn't need society's permission to have their own biological children. But parental rights are taken from those who badly fail in the socialization process. The failure rate is relatively Iow. Socialization is in part instinctive out of biological necessity for the survival of the species. It is also an experienced activity since we all went through it in some form. In addition, we learn by example, by observing others being parents.

Let me draw an analogy with "land." I use land in the very broadest sense, as Aldo Leopold (1949) used it in A Sand County Almanac. A parcel of land becomes the property of an individual owner under the social contract referred to as property rights. Each parcel is part of a larger element, which is part of a still larger element. The overused term to capture this concept is of course ecology. (Ecology carries so much baggage now that it must be used with caution.) Each parcel plays an ecological role, just like each person plays a social role. The socialization process for our society has arguably adapted adequately for the survival of our species. Increased wealth has made landownership possible for more individuals, especially those who didn't "grow up on the land."

What analogous process to the socialization of individuals to function in society exists for the "socialization" of individuals as owners of land within the "society" of individual parcels comprising a landscape? What feedback mechanism exists for landowners to reinforce actions that "socialize" their tracts of land - to have their tracts function in the ecological society of individuals ownership? Pieces of this process are in place. But it won't be complete until each individual landowner incorporates the role of his or her land in the "society" of individual tracts that make up the landscape. A key is to enable landowners and other stakeholders in a landscape to identify what aspects provide the characteristics they value, that give it the sense of place they take for granted because of its familiarity, whose loss they may not notice because of the slowness (in human terms) of the change.

CONCLUSION

How can a simultaneous perception process that creates a sense of place in an individual's mind be used in land use planning? How can you combine the senses of all the stakeholders of your landscapes? How can this composite sense be captured on a two dimensional planning map? Given the difficulty individuals have expressing what is good or less good about a place, how can a planner set out to make recommendations regarding what aspects to preserve, to restore, to modify to make more desirable? How can you determine how much change to allow and at what rate?

All I've done is define the concept of place and why it's important. My hope is that I've sensitized you to the importance of the concept in getting support for planning places for people and all living things within a landscape. There are basic principals of what's good and less good that hold for large segments of populations. Landscape architecture can help with this piece of the puzzle.

Most importantly, we need to facilitate additional opportunities for residents of our counties to carry out a broad-based discussion of what they value, of their sense of place. The discussion needs to combine and balance efforts focused on saving particular kinds of land uses.

With a basic understanding of some principals and most importantly the ability to engage stakeholders in appropriate processes, solutions can be developed. I'm excited about this effort because I'm confident that given a choice the residents of your counties will favor a balanced, well connected landscape that provides the full range of benefits. The solution to our environmental problems, however you define them, lies in this balanced approach to how we work with our working landscapes in Indiana.