If all maps were erased tomorrow, how would societies rebuild a sense of place?

Jixuan Li

London, UK

Andrew Stutesman from Unsplash

Sense of place is defined as “the emotive bonds and attachments people develop or experience in particular locations and environments, the distinctiveness of localities or regions, and the positive and negative bonds engendered by a location” (Foote and Azaryahu, 2009). Place is an inherently human concept, arising from human interactions with space. Maps are a social construct used to represent space, showing relative locations, boundaries and features that can convey uniform information, though maps do not represent meaning or experiences that constitute a sense of place. What creates a sense of place and how do societies rebuild it if maps were erased, through experience, cultural identity, political boundaries and digital networks?

In a world without maps, people’s experiences and memories of space wouldn’t disappear; instead, society would continue to build new versions of places through continued experience over time. Through lived experiences, humans naturally create mental maps, as proposed by the urbanist Kevin Lynch. These mental maps build a sense of space such that if physical maps were to disappear, that sense of place would not be lost. As shown in Figure 1, societies have a mental map of what their locality, on whatever scale, means relative to other localities, such that individual mental maps of space can be created, preserving a sense of place without physical maps (AliciaValdiviaAlexeeva, 2026). This is further captured by Lynch’s five-element model of a city in his book The Image of the City, in which  people organise space through landmarks, paths, edges, districts and nodes, allowing for a sophisticated model for building sense of place without physical maps (Lynch, 1960). In practice, mental maps of place could emerge through daily commuting to work, such that if maps ceased to exist, those patterns would remain in memory. Hence, geography of place emerges from everyday movements of lived experience. Because sense of place differs for everyone as each person’s experience of space differs, a collective sense of place is in constant turmoil, shifting through newly gained experience and perception such that it is impossible for physical maps to capture a uniform timeless sense of place. 

Furthermore, emotional attachment to space, as outlined by Tuan’s idea of topophilia, is another element of sense of place that is not representable by maps. The distinct meaning of space for an individual through direct or indirect experience is not something that can be mapped. Therefore, if physical maps were to disappear, society would still be rebuilding a sense of place through experiences and memories of space.

In 2024, Transport for London (TfL) rebranded the London Overground to the Liberty, Lioness, Mildmay, Suffragette, Weaver and Windrush lines to give routes distinct identities and to celebrate London’s diverse cultures and communities (Stokes and Edwards, 2024), costing £6.3 million to replace existing maps (Cunningham, 2024). This reinforces London’s identity as being a multicultural city, which is a societal sense of place resulting from TfL’s 2024 campaign. 

In this case, if all maps of London’s integrated transport system were removed, the widespread advertising of London’s culture would cease, hence reducing the extent of impact for sharing that multicultural sense of place. This example highlights that the sense of place is shaped by culture echoed through maps, but crucially maps do not build place itself. 

Doreen Massey argued that places have multiple identities, are processes independent of time, and are open systems. Therefore, without maps, societies would rely on ‘on-the-ground’ interactions between people and space, which makes place cultural and societal. Some maps might suggest that a space is indicative of a particular culture at a specific time; however, as Massey highlights, place is irrespective of time, so society would continue to build new versions of place for a space even without maps. 

Additionally, the identity of a society is another way to rebuild a sense of place, as highlighted by Benedict Anderson’s concept of an imagined community (Anderson, 1983). People who perceive themselves as part of a group become their own sense of place, irrespective of what a map says.

A key purpose of maps is to draw physical boundaries between societies with differences. Since humans started to settle over 10,000 years ago, transitioning from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian communities, societies have been marking their own boundaries of space. In the modern world, maps clearly define those boundaries, existing in two forms: political boundaries and physical boundaries. The most staggering examples of the former arise from colonial intervention, as seen with India and Pakistan. Bioregionalism, however, occurs with boundaries drawn from physical features of the land, such as mountain ranges or rivers, marking out boundaries. 

If maps were erased, there would be great challenges in identifying political boundaries, while physical boundaries would still clearly outline the edges of regions. Since each region has its own distinct sense of place, societies near political boundaries would build a sense of place through cultural mixing and turmoil, and perhaps through conflict that redefines political place. On a regional scale, memory and experience can no longer define the space of boundaries, and so geopolitics and power play a prominent role in redefining place as mapping of boundaries becomes obsolete. 

Many past examples illustrate the devastating impacts of shifting or losing boundaries, leading to monumental changes in a region’s sense of place. During the partition of India, 14 million people were displaced as monumental religious and cultural shifts occurred to split Hindu and Muslim communities, leaving the societies of the border regions between India and Pakistan highly vulnerable as old senses of place were destroyed (BBC, 2017). Therefore, the world would struggle deeply to rebuild a sense of place if maps were erased, especially in regions with political boundaries, such as Sub-Saharan.

In the 21^st century, if maps were erased, societies would likely rebuild a sense of place through technology and digital geography. In 1989, Manuel Castells introduced the concept of the space of flows, whereby society becomes organized through digital networks and connections (Castells, 1989). This idea suggests that, with societies existing in a highly digitalised world, societies will rebuild a new sense of place through such flows, given that 82% of all digital data generated today contains geotagging (Newgrove, 2017). Through digital interactions, existing spaces will shift into new senses of place from around the world through global interconnectedness. Due to how rapidly geotagged posts can circulate the world, digital platforms are likely to reconstruct a sense of place even faster than traditional cultural and memory-based methods if maps were erased.

In conclusion, if all maps were erased, societies wouldn’t lose their sense of place, as place can be further built through experiences, cultural identity, political boundaries and digital networks. Maps may help us understand and navigate space, but place is inherently human. Through shifting cultures, borders and means of communication, societies’ sense of place is constantly changing through people’s interactions with space. Ultimately, a sense of place does not stem from cartography, but from people; people who make up societies interact with and rebuild their sense of place.

References

AliciaValdiviaAlexeeva (2026). Kevin Lynch. Mental maps. [online] Slideshare. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/kevin-lynch-mental-maps/54901982 [Accessed 3 Apr. 2026].

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

BBC (2017). A Country Divided. [online] www.bbc.co.uk. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/partition_how_it_affected_me.

Castells, M. (1989). The informational city : information technology, economic restructuring, and the urban-regional process. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Cunningham, E. (2024). How much did it cost to rename the London Overground lines? Full expense of new line names revealed. Time Out London. [online] doi:https://doi.org/106184246/400/225.

Foote, K.E. and Azaryahu, M. (2009). Sense of Place. In: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp.96–100.

Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. London: The MIT Press.

Newgrove (2017). The incredible rise of geotagging - Newgrove. [online] newgrove.com. Available at: https://newgrove.com/the-incredible-rise-of-geotagging/.

Stokes, T. and Edwards, T. (2024). London Overground: New names for its six lines revealed. BBC News. [online] 15 Feb. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68296483.