The Role of Rural Sentiment and Vernacular Landscapes in Contriving Sense of Place in the City's Countryside

On one level, geography is about place and sense of place. On another level, it is about recognizing historical landmarks and the creation of symbolic landscapes. Sometimes, geography perpetuates received opinions that need deconstruction and one such example involves the myths and changing attitudes about the past that have spawned a culturally distinct but sentimental and contrived vernacular landscape in the city's countryside. Contemporary society has reclaimed historical landmarks, structures and narratives for a number of purposes. Rustification impulses and the search for past country decor in wider life spaces have altered the city's countryside and imbued past sites with new social, cultural, economic and more importantly, metaphorical meaning. Sentiment for the past has become an attractive amenity within the city's countryside.It is contended that the city's countryside is a paradoxical, non-Euclidean space where codign sets of attributes apply. It is less a new society that we experience than a new idea of the old. The city's countryside has as much claim to the title “symbolic landscape” as other socially and culturally constructed places.