Q1. What is "sense of place" and what does it have to do with ecological media?
My Story
Simmons and his daughters in
Alamos, Sonora, Mexico.
What does someone with a graduate degree in urban and regional planning and a love for poetry do to bridge those interests? Start a magazine, of course! I founded Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments in 1997 with fellow planning graduate Todd Ziebarth. We hoped, initially, to start a print journal, but without funding or magazine experience, we turned to an internet that hosted very few literary journals at the time.
I have served as editor and web developer ever since, moving the journal (and my family) from Denver to Tucson in 2000. With the move, I transitioned from a role as energy services manager with the U.S. Department of Energy to a web program manager (I now work at the University of Arizona in that capacity).
I also started a small web development business, Ocotillo Design, that is relevant here because of its tagline and scope: Crafting your virtual sense of place.
Like a favorite plaza or streetside café, websites should have a sense of place.
They must be elegant in design and aesthetic, usability and browser compatibility, and architecture and content. Indeed, the best websites — those that create a virtual sense of place — inspire and therefore motivate the user....
Sense of place has long been an interest in my physical and digital worlds, not only in the context, for example, of wireless community, but also in the pursuit of great places that integrate the built and natural environments.
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