-------- 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 0 Email: [log in to unmask] Oo "There is always hope." My fave: http://www.washington.edu/cambots/camera1_l.gif -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK------ GAT/d+(--) s++ a+++ C+++ UB++ UL++ US++ P+ L+ !e W+++ !N !o !K w+ O+ !M V PS+ PE- T++ PGPP t- 5 X R+++ tv+ b++++ DI+ D---G e+++ h+ r x? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-------