Local Distinctiveness

Losing Your Place : Distinctiveness

Distinctiveness is not the same as diversity, for it involves much more than variety, it degrades them to be used interchangeably. It is not about difference for its own sake, but recognizes that heterogeneity suggests richness: historical, cultural and ecological. Diversity is but one dimension. Current ecological preoccupations about biodiversity brings it to the fore. But biodiversity has a restricted range of usefulness, offering little help in argument for the tundra and so often the cultural is left out. The proliferation of varieties within species which have resulted from hundreds, possibly thousands of years of selection in horticulture and agriculture are often not considered.

Local distinctiveness links meaning, identity, patina and authenticity. Meaning implies many associations, deep significance and is sensed in the power of the place. Identity is bound up with affection for everyday activities and the symbolism of features and festivals.

Rarely do strict edges exist, as at the coast or because the army is using the land, or the green belt actually works or through dramatic quality of changing geology or geomorphology. Gradation is the common way in which one place ends and another begins.

Where two habitats meet the ecotone exhibits a richness of intermingling of species, often richer than the pure habitats it buffers. Just as in town some streets are dominated by small Indian shops and others by big chain stores, the area of greatest fascination may well be where they overlap.

Just as geologists are excited by unconformity, so archaeologists tell the time by reading the overlaps - a line of a Roman road cutting across field systems implies they are older, planners work with zones and designations. But we must not get diverted in looking for and drawing boundaries. Our preoccupa-tion must be with the idea of local distinctiveness as experienced by people.

We should not from the outside be drawing contours of similarity and somewhere away from the epicentre saying this is a different place. The definitions should be from the inside out and admit of variegation: it is possible for things to be compatible and very different and yet part of the same place... the buildings there may be a 'confliction' of styles and materials but together they make the place special.

Losing Your Place
Local
Detail
Authenticity
Particularity
Patina
References

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