Los lugares y no lugares en geografía

Abstract

«Place» is a word that have many applications and meanings in the daily talking. This has given way to different conceptual interpretations that may confuse to some geographers, especially those too close to social sciences. There are already some anthropological opinions in the sense that in opposition to places that reflect some identity to their users, there are the «non-places»; that is sites where people may transit without any feeling of their existence. Such are the cases of modern shopping centers, express highways, airports, etc.
The argument in this paper is that those sites are in some way stable in time and their permanence makes them part of a local landscape. In this sense, these artifacts become part of the landscape and are adopted by local people as part of their goods that develop some identity feelings alike the ones for places. This is shown when comparing with other places that have some similar spatial arrangements.