Читать книгу Geography For Dummies - Jerry T. Mitchell - Страница 25

Place responds to another important geographical question: “What is it like?” Place refers to the human and physical features that characterize different parts of Earth and that are responsible for making one location look different from the next. The terminology may puzzle you, because in everyday speech, people commonly use location and place interchangeably. In geography, however, these two terms have separate and distinct meanings. Location tells you where. Place tells you what it’s like. In other words, places are locations to which humans have assigned meaning.

Take, for example, the proliferation of streets in the United States named after Martin Luther King, Jr. Are they locations? Sure, they are. They have specific addresses along them and they occupy space in hundreds of cities. But I think that we can also agree that they are imbued with much meaning and create unique places. Further, where they are located also says a lot about the people, history, politics, and so on in the neighborhoods where we find them.