Place Description And Perception From A Spatial Humanities Perspective

In the historical process of urbanization and globalization,the convergence of cities is an indisputable fact.Many things is disappearing at an unimaginable speed,like the unique geographical features of the city,urban texture,and the urban culture developed in the long history of time and space.Tianjin city,which is located in the north China plain,is a historic and cultural city that is born because of water and booming because of water transport.Tianjin has a large area of wetland resources.In the process of urban development,this particular natural environment has been involved and deep into every aspect of people’s daily life.The water environment has irreplaceable influence on the residents,behavior habits,urban form and social culture of Tianjin.The research object of this case is the Weijin Road Campus of Tianjin university,which is the epitome of the urbanization process in Tianjin.The special natural geographical environment and special campus group make it very valuable and research significance.In recent years,Big Data and the development of computing has facilitated the concept and method of “Digital Humanities”,which has become a hot research around the world.With historians and other humanists are aware of that spaces are not passive setting but the medium for the development of culture,“Spatial Humanities”gradually become the consequence,because “the spatial turn” occurred in the field of“Digital Humanities”.It is not only the digitization process that aimed at non-quantifiable data as texts,but also its performance and context in spaces.Everything can be “quantified” in digital era,which brings new opportunities for the traditional research method.Creating “places” occupies a pivotal position in the architecture,urban planning,landscape and other fields.With the innovation of data sources and the increasing of computing and analysis,digital information can reveal reality efficiently and generally which leading to a thought change and make the data“speak” rather than relying solely on the researcher’s judgment.As a result,the study method of Spatial Humanities happens to be able to overcome weakness of the traditional experience mode of places perception which is considered subjective and low reliability.At the same time,compared with other places perception mode,it remains advantages of high sensitivity and reflection of the landscape development.The research direct at Tianjin University Weijin Road campus and surrounding environment,restore the process of hundreds year’s history changes about Weijin Road Campus water environment,spatial evolution characteristics and physical environmental performance and discuss community sites(place)perception changes on campus landscape by utilizing Tianjin large-scale historical maps in nearly 100 years and high accuracy remote sensing images since the Weijin Road Campus has constructed,cooperatively campus/city history text and image data and oral narratives by publication and interviews.In order to provided research sources for the campus environmental perception,sense of place analysis and environmental psychology research.This paper will introduce the overall framework and concept of this project.