My Friends in Low Places: Building Identity for Place and Community

Abstract

Urban sholarship linking geography, planning, and design has usually identified characteristics of specific places. In addition, urban analysis has attempted to link concepts of political ‘agency’, institutional arrangements, and notions of community to the economic and political history of places. In recent years, scholars in the humanities have been carefully examining the philosophical and political underpinnings of concepts of ‘the subject’, self, and agency. I contend that if geography is to have a place in the analysis of identity, political agency, and political action, the places to look are not necessarily at the pinnacle of theoretical, architectural, or political sophistication or at places with the highest demographic or economic magnitudes. Important places to look are ‘low places’. In this paper I propose six places to look for identity and political action that are normally overlooked, ignored, or excluded from serious consideration for revealing urban issues and potential change.