Example research essay topic: Large Scale Small Scale - 1,105 words

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Walking is a kind of practical knowledge, which is a mediator between person and space. While walking, people designate their self, whether consciously or not. Walking is a practice, which was characterized by culture. "Story begins on ground level, with footsteps... " 1. Pedestrian is a key form of metropolitan mobility. City can not be separated from the pedestrian, who is held to invite city to express itself. Walking can be considered the best way to make value of the city and space.

Practice of walking is examining the creation of space. Walkers can be compared to layers that are put in memories and history. These layers can be either personal or collective. Each time we enter a city, we fabricate magnificent order. Walking styles can variate inside and between societies. Walking people create a mix of rich and poor, men and women of different social backgrounds, as they work, go shopping, travel, and move down the roads.

All of them are occupying definite space. People create meaning within a particular environment. Through the grounded experience of walking, people have originality to unite time and place. "What can be seen designates what is no longer there" 2. The bodily practice of walking weaves together places, makes visible the past, which weaves itself into the present on a trip to the future. It is a practice, which creates the fabric of the city. The context of the walking process depends on how you walk and which direction you choose. "The ordinary practitioners of the city live "down below", below the thresholds at which visibility begins.

They walk - an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers... " 3 It is an element of each person's biography, a transient practice. But the physical body changes and differences between learning in infancy, adulthood and old age, and adjustments in relation to time of day, seasonality and the company of the walker are continually re-learned. Understanding of place and physical experience depend on senses and material things. These options are under continuous creation and how they appear depends on the framework of the walk, not only in the context of the walk's result, but also in relation to how people walk. "Spaces are produced and given meaning through social practices creating places. People's daily lives consist of a myriad of spatial behaviors" 4. Within imagined space people find out new personalities, opportunities for the future and new social and cultural structures.

Walking in a metropolitan context can be considered as a narrative spatial practice. Narrative space goes between the present world and future one. It helps to percept the world as something that was formed through the process of human meddling. Thus, the world represents a product. Language and thinking influence perception of the outer world and space. Reference is the key to narrative, which is a central subject of perfection. "Every narrative, even the most abstract, allegorical, or personal, plays a critical role in making places" 5.

Reference is symbolic. It occurs when a certain illustration, association or story are mentioned in a particular context. Imagined narrative exists in the fictive space of imagination. Small spatial stories, like drinking from a cup, moving along the path, eating a biscuit, are our personal representation of the symbolic sign.

While we perceive them, we make decisions that would correspond the spatial story's meaning. Usually we focus on the internal form of the sign itself, thus, we build our own representation of space and transform the space for others. "Narrative structures provide time- and space-ordered frames. " 6 We change the environment and perceive the changes that take place within our field of perception objectively. People want to live happily, but from the city's viewpoint their happiness is limited by the bondage. They are obliged to follow the set of rules, which are culture, structure of the city, environment. City states what is wrong and what is right, as it is a form created by people collectively, not for every individual. Each member is brought to the line where his or her positions are measured to those of social.

There is no single person, who can avoid the authority of the city. Though, narrative practices can link us with the present and imaginary worlds, where establishes our dignity, it deteriorates inhabitants' notion of space. Individuals and society have established certain rules, which are used to define suitable social representations and spatial practices. These rules govern people's spatial behavior and interactions are central for this type. But space and society do not interact between each other, because the space is the assistance for people if they happen to meet.

Though the space is produced by the society, it still has influence on it. "The spatial structure of the landscape is configuration of the physical open space of a given site with components such as structure, identity, and meaning. It is generally the organization of spaces where topographic characteristics, vegetation mass, built forms, spatial relationships, spatial organizations, and ordering principles interact. " 7 There are three main elements, which interact in time and influence on it: individual's spatial practices (perceived), individual representation of space (conceived), and collective spatial representation (lived). Spatial practices are closer to the narrative ones than representations. Spatial representations are the scope of activity for architects, scientists, all those, who establish things either lived, or perceived, or conceived.

Representation of space, which is conceived act as mediator between social practices, historical realism and individual practices. Through this process humans can perceive a new understanding of the world and feel their interaction with global wholeness. The individual practices and representations come out from the collective representation. In order to find space people go through the learning process, which is the reflection of individual's representation.

Each member develops in a very small part of the available space and his personal and past experience have no influence on the actual state of the space. "A critical distinction is between small-scale spaces, whose geometry can be directly perceived and large-scale space, which can be perceived only in relatively small parts. Fundamental terms for spatial relations often are based on concepts from small-scale space, and are metaphorically extended to large-scale (geographic) space. " 8 Space is a social production of human activities, processes and interferences. Collective spatial experiences are emphasized by narrative practices, which pay attention on the creation of the environment. It can be compared to a vessel, which preserves human history. Personal strategy refers to appearance and collective strategy refers to collectivization of space and society. Collective representation means that each person has right to use the other pe...

Research essay sample on Large Scale Small Scale