Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America

by Wilfred M. McClay (Editor), Ted V. McAllister (Editor)

Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life.

Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support?

Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society.

The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.

Genres: Nonfiction, Geography, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Sociology, Cultural

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2014

About the author

Wilfred M. McClay is the G. T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, and the Director of the Center for the History of Liberty. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America was awarded the Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America, Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America, and Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

Prof. McClay served on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, for eleven years. He is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semi-quincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his PhD in History from the Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

[Chris J · Rating 4 out of 5]

We'll call it a 3.75 star book. There are a few essays that could have been editorial casualties, but most every essay has at least a few nuggets of brilliance.
My favorites were: "Making Places" by Mark T. Mitchell, "Metaphysical Realism..." by Philip Bess, and "Making American Places" by Ted McAllister.
I came by my copy of this collection (personally inscribed!) when I met Mr. McClay at the 2013 Walker Percy Festival in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

[The American Conservative]

"Ted McAllister closes his essay by noting that “Healthy freedom, at least in the American story, require[s] places that move citizens to love where they live, to find themselves part of a local story … and to invest their time and energy in the evolution of a place strange, distinct, and perhaps even a little weird.” Why Place Matters provides resources that challenge, educate, and encourage anyone disquieted by a felt loss of attachment to consider seriously how place might be revived and our civic life reinvigorated."

Jonathan Coppage reviews: http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Benjamin Sigrist · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a little too academic for what I was expecting. I wish I was reading this in a college course to get some discussion around it because it was a struggle to get through it on my own.

Favorite essays: GPS and the End of the Road, Place-Conscious Transportation Policy.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

My reading habits betrayed me a bit in digesting this book. I'm a person who keeps a half-dozen or more books going at a time, so at any given moment based on immediate circumstances I have something I can pick up and continue with. If I have a few moments over a cold drink in the middle of a day of cutting firewood, I can dip into a light novella, peruse ideas on architecture or drawing, be stimulated by stories of early settlers of the American West.

Other times I'm ready for some beefier ideas to ponder--Aldo Leopold is always an inspiration in thinking of whole systems, or I may be pondering the themes of history like the nature of good and evil which are invited by looking at stories of the Holocaust. A bigger theme for me, in my decision to live in a remote mountain area, is the nature of community living and the importance of social interaction.

In that light and in the context of my years spent in the community planning profession, I found the title of this book engaging and inviting. Why Place Matters.

It only snuck up on me gradually as I read it that this is actually something of a political screed, addressing the issue of Government Control vs the Invisible Hand of the Market. In truth the authors seem to come down, ever so gently (and defensively) on the side of recognizing there actually may come conditions, sometimes and with great caution, that the Market must give way to a greater level of coordination and farsightedness that come with public organization and planning.

I suppose one might suspect an underlying political philosophy theme here, given the lead author's specialty in the History of Liberty and association with the evangelical Trinity Forum. I just didn't see it coming.

My scattered time allotted to studying the ideas here may leave me misunderstanding what's actually on the pages, but since I have not a trace of worship in me for the forces of the Marketplace, it's not something I particularly want to delve into any deeper. I long ago came to terms with the limitations of basing a life on economic considerations alone.

[Russell Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting collection of essays, even more random than the usual range of essays you might find in any thematically connected volume. Quite a few of them simply fell flat for me, mostly because they were too brief or they were, in my view, rather unsubtle and unsophisticated in their politics. But a handful were truly wonderful--and, perhaps not coincidentally, given the premise of the argument, that handful almost entirely were meditations upon on the way we, and our built communities, take up space. In other words, they touched on transportation (the first and longest essay in the volume, Ari Schulman's "GPS and the End of the Road," was brilliantly thoughtful), urban development (with a couple of thoughtful architects and scholars of urbanism, Witold Rybczynski and Philip Bess, taking somewhat opposite positions on the central question of how or if we can or should rebuild our environmentally unsustainable and often ugly cities), civic activity, and much more--all of which are topics which fascinate me. So while these essays are far from all equally worth your time, it was, for me nonetheless, a volume worth working through.

[Nathan M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surprised me in a few ways, and I’m overall glad I read it. It’s a collection of essays rather than 1 cohesive story, and reads like a sociology textbook with varying viewpoints and priorities, rather than a work with one straight hypothesis and narrative. By the nature, there were a few essays I was particularly drawn to, while others I found a little too theoretical for my particular taste.
Favorite essays:
1) Mark Mitchel “Making Places: The Cosmopolitan Temptation” - idea: in the pursuit of keeping our options open and optimizing, we miss out on the best of human goods that can only be found in commitment and proximity.
2) Ted McAllister- “making American places” - idea: art consists in limitation, The art of turning space into place is the art of limiting in order to create.
3) Wilfred McClay “the space was ours before we were the place’s” - idea: the optimal urban place is both a nexus of memory and a generator of activity, an enabler of personal aspiration. It can ground us, and root us in itself-but also lift and inspire us, pointing us beyond and above what we otherwise could be.

[Daniel Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

GOODS OF PLACE GOODS OF PLACE GOODS OF PLACE

[Jennie Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well-researched book has given me a deeper awareness and consciousness about the meaning and sense of "place." I bought the book because I have come to believe that there are places where we really thrive better than others. Whether it's the energy of the place or city, the sense of community, the physical beauty, culture, arts, nature, people or parks -- there are certain places where each of us becomes more alive, reaches our potential more easily and naturally, and we became our best selves. So the book interested me in understanding this better. The book is somewhat academic, but overall, I enjoyed reading it and learning more about why we flourish in "places" and what makes places really great to live in or visit.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collected reflections on local places from a number of disciplinary perspectives, growing out of a 2011 conference at Pepperdine's public policy school. There are several common themes, most notably the importance of place to individual identity, and the need to protect places from the bigs (government, planners, developers). I particularly valued Joseph A. Amato's essay on the role of local historians, and Gary Toth's piece on the impact of transportation policy choices on places.

[Jake Cooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two of the 16 essays are good, but the majority do little to dispel the humanities' reputation as:
- vacuous ("Place draws us back to the past, but it also serves us as a launching pad from which we are made capable of thrusting forward and upward.")
- vague science minus data ("What family members do around each other at home has less and less to do with each other.")

[Mills College Library]

917.3 W6293 2014

[Emily Kidd]

Had to read certain essays for Brent Newsom's Comp 1 class fall semester freshman year.