What is place?

The Placial Project is about place, placemaking, and their role within the story of the Bible. No doubt, this sounds very unfamiliar, even odd. If you’d like to read further, you will first need to ask, “What is place, anyway?”

We at The Placial Project are claiming that place and placemaking are extremely important concepts for correctly reading the Bible. In fact, we would rank them alongside other more familiar topics, such as kingdom or Trinity. The difference, however, is that place and placemaking have a mission in the Bible, one that humans are to accomplish and that the Bible then records in progress throughout the Bible.

Place and placemaking, having a mission, also have their own narrative, as the Bible records the mission in progress. This placial narrative is one of only two grand narratives of the Bible. The other grand narrative, of course, is the story of sin and God’s provision of salvation. Together, these two stories unite and develop together throughout the Bible, forming the Bible’s one master story.

No doubt this is catching you by surprise. Two grand narratives, each with its own mission that the Bible then records in progress throughout its pages? If correct, however, you can understand why we are claiming that this is a very important concept, and why its neglect would be significant. This neglect is what we aim to address.

To repeat then, we ask the question, “What is place?” After which, we ask two corollary questions: “What is placemaking?” And “Does placemaking really have its own mission that has its own grand narrative throughout the Bible?”

This first newsletter addresses the first question—what is a place? What is it that constitutes a place as a place? (For more clarification, please see my dissertation.) In short, place has three constituent parts. One is location. The second is locale, meaning the people and things that are in the location. The third is sense of place, or how one experiences the location and locale.

Thus, in the case of the place called Calvary, as found in Jerusalem of the first century, it had a GPS location. It had an urban, hilly locale, market by Jewish and Roman features from local people, and their businesses, and their homes, etc. And, It had a sense of place that varied from person to person, ranging from a tragic sense, to religious, to governmental, to executionary, and so on.

It is important to remember, however, that people are also part of a place; they are not separate from it. A place therefore includes the people who are there in the locale, as well as including the space itself plus the non-living things, the plants, the animals, and all that is in the locale.

So, in the case of Calvary there were Romans who helped to mark Calvary as a place for Christians and Jews. Then, there were also Jews who helped define Calvary for Romans and Christians. And there were Christians who helped to define Calvary for Romans and Jews. Together, Calvary became a specific place in time, and it still continues today as a place that builds on its past and that looks toward its future.

In short, place is a person’s meaningful experience of the location, locale, and sense of place. With this basic definition in hand, we can move into the next discussions by The Placial Project.