A Place-Based Approach

The integrating concept of place provides a holistic approach to our relationships with our environment. It cuts across and beyond traditional academic disciplines. Such an understanding is a vital step toward promoting a just and sustainable world.

Time and again, conservation and environmental projects have faltered or failed because they ignored local ecological circumstances, historical contingency, and distinctive cultural and personal needs. A place-based approach to environmental issues can help to avoid such problems. It provides a bottom-up approach to environmental understanding and practice by paying close attention to particular environments, communities, and people.

There are many approaches to environment and place. For example, a bioregional perspective links place to identity and local forms of governance within an ecological context. Humanistic geography provides a sophisticated social perspective on place as a phenomenon. Architects, educators, artists, writers, activists, and others view place in still other distinctive ways.

Together, these multiple perspectives provide a fuller understanding of the many aspects of environment and place.