Non‐place and placelessness as narratives of loss: Rethinking the notion of place

Abstract

Concepts such as non‐place and placelessness can provide planners and designers with new insights to better capture the essence of place. This essay first reviews the literature of place and its byproducts, namely non‐place and placelessness. Against such a backdrop, the paper then explores how the contemporary transformation of the three components of place, namely locale, location and sense of place, has contributed to a narrative of loss. Characterized by loss of meaning and loss of proper connection between locations, the geographies of ‘otherness’ and ‘nowhereness’ and the crisis of identity are among the major implications of this narrative.