Architecture Commons^™

Community Identity: Place And The South Knoxville Waterfront, Nicholas Joseph Burger

Masters Theses

“With the loss of tactility and the scale and details crafted for the human body and hand, our structures become repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, and unreal” (Holl 29). Our built environment is full of constructs which are unsuccessful on a number of levels proving why it is critical to concentrate on a sense of place and identity. A great place is described as one where people gravitate towards, a place for everyone, something that is memorable, and a space which evokes a story (Placemaking Is...). South Knoxville, Tennessee, the selected site of this thesis, will test the concept of place …

Addressing Local Development And Local Identity: Rethinking The Chapman Highway Corridor In South Knoxville, William Edward Copeland

Masters Theses

This thesis addresses the idea of identity within the landscape. The mechanisms that form identity, the representation of identity through both tangible and intangible forms, and the growth,evolution, and erosion of identity over time are all topics that help to inform the argument being made. Moving from an abstract ideal to a specific place, I will address the needs of a local Knoxville community that has come to struggle in recent years due to a loss of their identity within a regional context. Working to translate the mechanisms that foster a sense of identity into physical changes to the landscape …

Strip Development And Community: Maintaining A Sense Of Place, Andrew Kelly Carr

Masters Theses

Abstract

Strip development eases communities’ economic troubles by providing jobs and cheap goods at the expense of a sense of place and social fabric. Four factors are critical to the dissolution of place in strip development: mobility, standardization, specialization, and technology. (Randolph Hester)

Mobility gives people the freedom to move over distances with little constraint; a consequence of this is a produced sense of rootlessness within many communities.

Standardization creates placelessness in communities by the repetition of form and function.

Specialization diminishes comprehensive knowledge of place and complex social and ecological thinking.

Technology may divorce people …