Place matters

This article positions place within a phenomenological framework. Current philosophical inquiry shows little interest in place, yet academic disciplines concerned with spatial properties look to philosophy—and in particular phenomenology—to provide important contributions to overcome the limitations of quantitative methodologies, particularly with respect to sentiments of attachment to and identification with places. Seemingly, however, philosophy offers little support in this field. Place disappears from philosophical investigations during the Middle Ages and is replaced by considerations on space. Keeping the employment of phenomenological approaches in other academic disciplines in mind, this article sets out to explore traces of a re-emerging interest in place among twentieth-century phenomenologists. It proposes a phenomenological approach to place in which there is a shift from regarding place in terms of a where to understanding what a place is in human experience.