Framing
We developed a conceptual framework in response to the limitations we identified from previous research and the research significance of multispecies places.
Anthropocentric Place
Anthropocentric concepts of place consider sentience a minimum requirement for understanding place. While place is a product of human cognition and culture, all life exhibits behaviour suggesting they form place attachment. For example, most organisms react to environmental stimuli based on past experiences.
Place and Perception
We suggest that an observer's perceptions define their sense of place. Organisms interpret the physical world based on their capabilities. Birds, apes, dogs, and bees perceive, interpret, and respond differently to a similar set of wavelengths: the colour spectrum. Neurological differences such as colour-blindness produce differences in members of the same species.
Place and Complexity
Capabilities such as cognition, memory, culture, language, and sentience increase the complexity of an organism's response to stimuli. Communication enables agents to articulate and transmit internal experiences. These dynamics produce extremely complex and diverse senses of place.
Few species possess these capabilities, but all life exhibits the same fundamental behaviours: organisms react to stimuli based on their ability to perceive and interpret the physical world.
As designers, making informed decisions depends on understanding places and their inhabitants. Traditional discourse distinguishes human and non-human place, which presumes place as an experience can only emerge from the superior human intellect. This framing prioritises the right of wealthy, privileged humans to control places.
Multispecies Places
Therefore, we define a place as a series of constructs created by individuals according to their capability to perceive the world. As much as possible, we do not distinguish between capabilities or species based on their complexity.
We call the complexity that emerges from this immense variance in perceptions place.
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