-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        RE: psychological mapping - WARNING: Long reply
Date:   Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:46:33 -0800
From:   Virginia R. Hetrick, Ph.D. <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:       [log in to unmask]
To:     [log in to unmask]


Hi, Becky -

There has been a lot of this kind of thing done, especially in the early
1970s.  You might look for Glenn VanSelow (Spatial imagery and
geographic scale was his disseration at UW in 1973) or for Yi Fu Tuan
who both did a lot of work on this as geographers who have done work on
this topic.  It's also called mental mapping and applies to a lot of
different things.  Tuan wrote a monograph for the AAG (Man and Nature)
back about 1970 and numerous books and articles about this stuff.

What first got me started with this stuff was the whole idea of
anthropocentric mental maps, especially when I found out that
historically the name for China when referred to by its nationals was
"Middle Kingdom" (my T-shirt commemorating Tienamin Square actually has
the Chinese for Middle Kingdom on it).  And, if you play Mahjongg, north
and south are "properly oriented"; but, when north is at the top, west
is on the right and east is on the left, backwards to the way Westerners
orient things.

It helps define neighborhoods. i.e., what's downtown Duarte for me,
what's on the hill or what's uptown in my hometown, what's Capital Hill
or the U District in Seattle, etc.  It also helps define neighborhoods
for people who want to avoid certain areas.  For example, when I was
living in Gainesville, one of my favorite restaurants was Mama Lo's
which was technically in the ghetto.  I regularly walked through the
area which is how I wound up at Mama Lo's.  Yet, a lot of my friends
wouldn't venture through the area even by car because they had a mental
map of the town that included a big hole in that  part of twon.

One of the aspects of this that has always fascinated me is how it seems
SO long to get to a new place the first time you go there and how the
place becomes SO near once you know the way.  My cousin teaches at the
University of Iowa.  When I first drove to her farm about 14 miles from
Iowa City, it felt like it more like 30 or 40 miles from town.  The next
three evenings when I drove there, it was zip-zip and I was there.

Just now,  I'm working on a project in Death Valley and another at
Manzanar.  And, I've never been to that area of California before.  The
first day I drove into DV from Las Vegas (it was a cancer conference and
I didn't drop so much as a nickel in a slot machine!) via Pahrump.  The
paper map looked pretty bleak west of Pahrump and it turned out to be
so.  But, it turned out I was following an NPS ranger (unbeknownst to
me) in her van and so I felt pretty secure in case something went
wrong.  I spent a chunk of the afternoon exploring the area around
Furnace Creek and left for Lone Pine.  By that time, it was DARK, the
road in the Valley was pretty straight (forward), but climbing out of
the Valley was like the Adventure computer game, twisty roads, all
alike, instead of twisty tunnels, all alike. My speed dropped from 45 to
under 25.  I figured it was going to take MANY hours to get to Lone
Pine.  It turned out only to take 2.25 hours (obviously with no stops
for pictures) and including a stop for dinner.

The next day I did the Mount Whitney thing (about 15 miles and 0.5 hours
from Lone Pine) and Manzanar thing (only 9 miles from Lone Pine on a
mostly 4 lane, straight, flat road).  Neither of those felt particularly
far.  Then, I went off to the Bristlecone Pine area.  The Bristlecone
run seemed forever.  It took nearly an hour from the main road, but only
35 minutes back down to the main road.  The next day I went back to DV
and it seemed like zipzip to get to Furnace Creek from Lone Pine.  From
there I went south to Badwater (282 feet below sea level in case you
don't know).  It didn't seem particularly far even though I'd never been
down that road before.  But then, I started driving out of the park
south towards Baker which, again, seemed forever (it was about 2.5 hours
elapsed time) and I'd never driven from Badwater to Baker.

BTW - There's a book called Learning from Las Vegas about this (I think
by an architect, Venturi, maybe) which looks at this in the context of
the biggest commercial strip mall of all (and it's GROWN since he wrote
the book).

So, I continue to be fascinated by how we perceive distance even though
I'm not (and have never been) a researcher on the topic.

HTH.

virginia

--
\ /     Virginia R. Hetrick, here in sunny California
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Oo     "There is always hope."
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