Institute of Advanced Studies

Revisiting ‘Sense of Place’ in a rapidly changing world

by Stephen D. Hopper, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, and School of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia

UWA Friends of the Grounds and the Institue of Advanced Studies present the 2009 George Seddon Lecture.   

Professor George Seddon’s Sense of Place, first published in 1972, was a landmark for many Western Australians. The book challenged readers to look at Perth and the Swan Coastal Plain with fresh eyes from geological, botanical and human perspectives. Seddon proposed that ‘A sense of place shows most clearly in the way the community feels about and uses the landscape’. He concluded: ‘My hope is that Perth will become more parochial and that planning for it will be minutely topical’. Among other influences, the book inspired Professor Hopper to undertake a personal and ongoing exploration of Australian landscapes, their evolution and biodiversity conservation, and their global context. Now that rapid climate change is upon us, accompanied by global loss of carbon sinks and biodiversity, there is merit in exploring the continued relevance of Seddon’s main themes in Sense of Place.

Through understanding the geological history and evolutionary biology of landscapes, and by observing past and present human use of land, the power of place becomes evident. Moreover, some places, south western Australia among them, are so different from most that novel ways of living sustainably are needed to ride the winds of global change.

This lecture explored these ideas, and called for a significant, place-driven, rethink of human use of land and water as an integral part of appropriate responses to a rapidly changing world.

Emeritus Professor George Seddon AM

Born in 1927, George Seddon studied English at the University of Melbourne, and later gained both an MSc and PhD in Geology at the University of Minnesota. He was an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at University of Melbourne and a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in English at UWA.  He was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Planning Institute, the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, and the Australian Academy of Humanities. His books include Swan River Landscapes, Landprints, From the Country, A Landscape for Learning and Sense of Place. He was awarded the Eureka Prize from the Australian Museum in 1995, the Mawson Medal from the Academy of Science in 1996 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Planning Institute of Australia.

11 August 2009