DiSSERTATION

 

Place and Non-place: Encountering Urban Space

Through Sense Of The City

 

In this dissertation, I attempted to understand how the

relationship between the senses of the city based on visual and material with Marc Augé’s theory of place and non-place. Basically, the research is to find the senses of the city in term of visual and material is to support the argument of the public space, in this research, Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens as a place or a non-place. The Piccadilly Garden was the perfect case study because it is now one of the significant place to the city of Manchester. It becomes one of the major stop for public buses and Metrolink trams as well. The locals are used to the place for social interactions, events and recreations. However, to determine whether the space is considered as a place or non-place, it is also must be related to the social anthropology of the public space.

 

Using Augé’s theory, users’ perceptions of the Gardens are

important to seek an evidence to discuss whether the Garden is a place or non-place. In this research also, the sense of the place; visual and materiality of the Gardens will be discussed together in order to know to decide the space is a place, stated by Augé. From the evidence, this will then enable us to determine a good public space that can be use for the locals and set a standard for a successful public space. With a standard, a public space can be improved in term of spatial quality by creating different senses for the users to experience the public space as a genius loci.