Strip Development and Community: Maintaining a Sense of Place

Abstract

Strip development eases communities’ economic troubles by providing jobs and cheap goods at the expense of a sense of place and social fabric. Four factors are critical to the dissolution of place in strip development: mobility, standardization, specialization, and technology. (Randolph Hester)

Mobility gives people the freedom to move over distances with little constraint; a consequence of this is a produced sense of rootlessness within many communities.

Standardization creates placelessness in communities by the repetition of form and function.

Specialization diminishes comprehensive knowledge of place and complex social and ecological thinking.

Technology may divorce people from their natural environments.

I want to test these four place indicated principles within LaFollette, Tn. Through methods of mapping, observation, structured interviews, and photographic and archival research I will show how strip development has negatively altered the social and economic development of the city of LaFollette. I will identify elements that currently and historically give the city of LaFollette a sense of place, and encourage social interaction and investment.

Strip development can drastically alter the dynamics of communities, both physically and socially. How can communities grow and develop while maintaining this connection to “place”, and how can the social dynamic of a community be encouraged in light of a changing, and growing community?