Mental Map-less

“You can’t know who you are until you know where you are.” – Wendall Berry

Normally, there is a linear gathering of information when traveling across a city. You start to piece together a mental map. Your “sense of place” begins to develop. It’s usually incorrect and disproportionate, but it’s a start and you make corrections as you go. You immediately start to gather information on the essense of a location. You start to understand what it means to be there. This process, for most people, is largely sub-conscience. I happen to be very sensative to this process because of my city-planning classes, and, as I drove across Houston, I realized that it wasn’t happening... at all. It was disturbing. If you had asked me, “What is Houston like?” after my first few days here, I would have responded, “It’s not like anything.”

The concept of “place-ness” has always fascinated me, and it is affected by so much more than architecture and planning. I think that traveling is only enjoyable when you are experiencing and learning, on whatever level, the essence of where you are.

The good news is that I have since found parts of Houston that are much more interesting (more on those later).

I have also done some research and figured out some of the reasons why I felt so Place-less (more on that sooner.)