Non Places

‘We are increasingly in transit through ‘non-places’.Corners that lurk at the edge of activity. Passageways where activity occurs but the relationship between use and place remains unnamed. Places where names are incidental, meaningless because the need for communication – or the passage of time spent – is already deemed to be transient, insignificant, minimal, empty. Street corners, bus stops, shopping malls, motorways, airport lounges – new forms of solitude.
But if the city is truly a place saturated with meaning, ‘it is also a place where meaning and value are distributed evenly’ (Rogers). Non places are not just empty passageways devoid of significance because the city is ‘traced’ with the echo of events, silent marks made by personal memories that reveberate in and around public space.