Cognition of Physical and Built Environments
Reginald G. Golledge · Oxford University Press eBooks · 1992
Environmental knowledge is acquired by interacting with, or experiencing, different environments. The interaction may be direct and active, as would be the case when a person lives in, travels through, or otherwise physically experiences a particular environment. Interaction may also take place, however, by accessing different sources of information including such things as photos, slides, movies, videos, paintings, or other visual representations, as well as haptically perceived information such as might be acquired from tactual maps, table models, or different types of sensing devices. Information abstracted from these many sources is stored in long-term memory as part of a general knowledge structure. As the need arises, such information is processed to provide knowledge of location, distribution, pattern, dispersion, connectivity, configuration, and other properties, which assist in preparing travel plans and activating movement. There are of course many “environments,” and it makes little sense to refer to “the environment.” Even the “physical” environment encompasses the markedly dissimilar worlds of landforms, marine, surface and groundwater domains, vegetation, atmosphere, weather, and climate. Add to that the complexities of other external realities such as the built and transformed landscapes of human occupance, and it makes even less sense to regard them as one. Often these domains compete with each other via invasion and succession procedures (e.g., the invasion of agricultural land by urban uses; the successful invasion of inner city residential areas by expansion of commerce, business, and industry; the invasion of natural grasslands by domestic plants and animals), while at other times they exist in harmony. Perhaps the one common feature is that they are assumed to exist independently of mind—that is, they are “external” to mind. Assuming this to be so, the concept of “environmental cognition” can be examined. In this chapter, we will first discuss the basic spatial elements or components that allow both differentiation and clustering of phenomena found in large- and small-scale environments. This is followed by discussion of the components of an environmental knowledge structure, highlighting both individual and integrated components of knowledge, and emphasizing spatial characteristics.