A Sense of City — From a Historical Perspective

Abstract

In the urban development process, city sense is the key to a subjective reality and all subjective realities are in a dialectic relation with the society. It focuses on feelings toward the physical environment from a personal level; such feeling could be gained through the memory of their own experiences, which focus on the consciousness over a period of time. However, such sense has been lost due to the urban development process, and the loss of uniqueness has become a common problem that fast changing environments are facing, especially in developed countries. The city sense of such urban development process has two functions: prevent the loss of uniqueness, which was based on history, and generate new identities. The two have both positive and negative aspects, therefore, how to interpret the sense of city becomes more important as the needs to develop the positives and avoid the negatives in urban development. With such perspectives, this paper will concentrate on evaluating the effect that history has to the form of city sense and why it is important in terms of forming a valuable city sense.

Keywords

City Sense / History / Urban Identity / Sense of Place / Memory

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2016 Higher Education Press