Through a phenomenological lens, Seamon argues that places are not passive settings but active participants in the human experience, co-constituted through synergistic relationality—a concept describing the evolving, reciprocal interplay between individuals and their surroundings. This interaction forms a "dance" of experience, where memory, bodily rhythms, spatial design, and cultural practices converge to shape how meaning emerges in place. Drawing from lifeworld phenomenology and systems theory, Seamon articulates six foundational processes—such as coherence, attachment, interaction, and symbolism—which influence whether a place becomes deeply inhabited or alienating. He presents case studies from architecture, urban planning, and community psychology, illustrating how thoughtful design fosters dwelling intelligence—a person’s capacity to intuitively engage with and feel at home in a place. Conversely, environments marked by rapid change, fragmentation, or placelessness disrupt this intelligence, leading to disconnection and experiential impoverishment. Seamon’s work reframes the idea of walkability, often treated as a metric of urban efficiency, into a practice of belonging grounded in memory, emotion, and embodied perception. Walking, then, becomes a way of making sense of place, rather than simply navigating space. He advocates for designers to pay attention to subtle environmental qualities—texture, temporal rhythms, seasonal shifts, and pattern continuity—that shape emotional attachment, rather than prioritising purely functional or aesthetic criteria. By challenging the rationalist, context-blind assumptions that dominate modernist planning, Seamon’s Life Takes Place (2018) offers a powerful alternative: a theory of place grounded in embodied meaning, emotional resonance, and the lived realities of everyday life. His work is essential for those aiming to cultivate environments where inhabiting becomes a form of becoming, where the design of spaces encourages rootedness, memory, and relational depth.
Seamon, D. (2018) Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place-Making. London: Routledge.
