The concept of place has been present in human geography for almost half a century. The human geographers looked for the answer about genesis of place category in different sociological or psychological aspects with the basis of space dimension. In last two decades a few of them referred that idea to communication processes. Inspired by the views expressed by the latter group of scientists, we are asking: how is creating a place? We put forward thesis that a special type of place making is social communication that works continuously on the principle of the palimpsest of overlapping meanings through messages arising in several dimensions. Our assumption is that every place is creating (overwriting) a social subject – an individual or a group, that will build communication in three dimensions: within a space/place (W), about a space/place (A), and/or between people and a space/place (B).

Identity in a housing environment is one of its resources as valuable as its water, air, flora and fauna. The readability of identity should be the basic factor of the quality of architecture and landscape architecture recognizable as a significant resource. It is an important factor which influences the living standard of people who inhabit a given space from a psychological, social and cultural point of view. In order to care for identity, we must be aware of it, of its role and significance in our lives and residence in a given environment. Man must understand the phenomenon of the meaning of life with respect to its space as his place in the world. When we understand the all-embracing rhythm and taste of the life of a place of residence, we will comprehend life itself.

This paper brings up elementary problems related to the creation of friendly public spaces in residential complexes as the main places of social integration. Contemporary social transformations are reflected in a new, intensified usage of public spaces which – offering more and more possibilities of satisfying human needs in the field of social contact, knowledge, recreation, stimulation etc. – provoke people and their activities to transfer “life” from a private space to a public space.

The paper presents a catalogue, with description, detailed map location and references to first publications, of new place names introduced mainly during the Polish Geodynamic Expeditions to West Antarctica, 1984-1991. In the South Shetland Islands, new place names were introduced in parts of King George Island and Deception Island (Some new names for Admiralty Bay, King George Island and Penguin Island, introduced prior to 1984 but not yet formally described, are also included here). In Antarctic Peninsula, new place names have been introduced at Hope Bay (Trinity Peninsula), Arctowski Peninsula-Andvord Bay (Danco Coast/Gerlache Strait) and Paradise Harbour (Danco Coast).

Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) was established in 2003 by the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) with the main goal to deepen understanding of the dynamic Earth system by quantifying human-induced Earth’s changes in space and time. GGOS allows not only for advancing Earth Science, including solid Earth, oceans, ice, atmosphere, but also for better understanding processes between different constituents forming the system Earth, and most importantly, for helping authorities to make intelligent societal decisions. GGOS comprises different components to provide the geodetic infrastructure necessary for monitoring the Earth system and global changes. The infrastructure spread from the global scale, through regional, to national scales. This contribution describes the GGOS structure, components, and goals with the main focus on GGOS activities in Poland, including both the development of the geodetic observing infrastructure as well as advances in processing geodetic observations supporting GGOS goals and providing high-accuracy global geodetic parameters.

In the era of an aging society, age friendly cities planning is gaining in importance. Due to the low mobility of these people, it is important to plan their immediate living environment, ensuring access to facilities and areas that meet the basic needs of this special group of urban space users. The paper analyzes the potential accessibility of older people to green areas, sports and recreation facilities, service and commercial facilities, culture and health care facilities, and public transport stops, in order to delimit problem areas characterized by functional and spatial deficits in this area. In addition, the level and quality of accessibility of older people to the abovementioned elements of development.

In the paper author discusses problems related to the leading role of architectural structures, as a part of the creating process within contemporary urban space. Architectural objects establish a continuous dialogue not only with their surrounding space, but also between each other. In this relation, the first plan comes with two factors, determining all spatial and functional solutions: the place in which a given project is localized and the time in which the urban designer came to the architect to create his plan. Based on the analysis of own projects and urban and architectural realizations, the author proves that the architectural dialogue in urban space must be respected in the context of the place and the time, but also in the creators moral responsibility. This responsibility is defined by consequences of design decisions not only for the urban space itself, but above all, for people and their coexistence with the space. For designers it reveals a necessity to comply principles of ethics and professing the value system in order to taking care of the urban space not only three-dimensional, but also “existential”.

The concept of city has got broad analytical perspectives, one of them are: the structural perspective, sociological, psychological, political, cultural, industrial and also the pedagogical perspective. In opposition to the concept of city is the concept of countryside, within which the concept of nature is regarded as an idyllic place, it is the place of childhood, the place of longing, it is the lost place that has been starting to go under the knife of time since the 20s of the last century. The apotheosis of the concept of city, that is being practiced by many artists, embracing the symbolics of the concept of city by mass culture and later by popular culture, causes the necessity to take the initiative of conducting the research that would attempt to establish the identity of the concept of city in modern culture. The article attempts to specify how the concept of city functions in popular culture through the analysis of chosen texts in popular music, starting from the 50s of the XX century until the XXI century.

The trip towards a magic Cathar Country, our UIA Program “Places of Worship”. On the way Amsterdam. As the City, as Stock by Hendrik Berlage, as Nemo by Renzo Piano are impressive as always. Then Touluse, surptising are not only Saint Sernin basilica and Couvent des Jacobins, but also the Modern Metro. Then scientific session - didcussion. At last, awaited castles. Rocky mountains topped with great ruined edifices. Climbing with Wojtek in a terrible southern sunshine. Magnificent landscapes, and a dramatic history behind. Then Carcassonne, and culminating emotions, sanctuary Lourdes.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the distinguished properties of by-names as forms different from official ones, to analyze their structural and semantic features and to search for their historical evidence. By-names of Chinese places should not be defined as unusual and informal, since actually in many cases by-names are formal and very common in China nowadays. By-names are generally bestowed on important places (mostly cities) that win the public interest. Most of them have two structural parts, the front specific parts are determiners / qualifiers and the back ones are generics. The generics generally are: cheng 城 ‘town / city’, du 都 ‘capital’, jiang 江 ‘river’, shan 山 ‘mountain’, dao 岛 ‘island’ etc. The lexical meanings of lexical items forming specific parts of by-names mainly refer to animals, plants, minerals, local manufactured products, climate and natural scenery, geographical location, humans, areas, etc. Chinese contemporary by-names, used on various occasions, vary in frequency and stability. The by-names discussed in the paper only account for a small proportion and are listed just due to their relatively high frequency, stability and acceptability.

Waterfront regeneration of port districts emerge as a tool for prestigious development of cities in urban re-imaging and growth. Creation of prestigious housing in these areas are part of a broader strategy of mixed-use and property-led development, but in absence of a holistic approach in planning and design, the urban landscapes may be developed merely on basis of the real estate frameworks. This article looks at how development trends of port cities can take an unintended stance in property-led regeneration of port districts, creating gated communities and failing to succeed in achieving the pre-determined objectives in urban planning. The discussion, which will address to issues of place-making, commodification of public space and planning policies, will take the port city of Izmir as the case. It is suggested that the adoption of a holistic approach to urban planning should guide the regeneration processes and design should take place-making into consideration.

The water’s edge is the most iconic and identifiable image related to the city of Durban and in seeking an ‘authenticity’ that typifies the built fabric of the city, the image that this place creates is arguably the answer. Since its formal establishment as a settlement in 1824, this edge has been a primary element in the urban fabric. Development of the space has been fairly incremental over the last two centuries, starting with colonial infl uenced built interventions, but much of what is there currently stems from the 1930’s onwards, leading to a Modernist and later Contemporary sense of place that is moderated by regionalist infl uences, lending itself to creating a somewhat contextually relevant image. This ‘international yet local’ sense of place is however under threat from the increasingly prominent ‘global’ image of a-contextual glass high-rise towers placed along a non-descript public realm typical of global capital interests that is a hallmark of the turnkey project trends by developers from the East currently sweeping the African continent.

The article concerns the history and unique nature of local names derived from exonyms, such as Alexandria, Spain and Lisbon. It describes both past and contemporary onyms, i.e. the names of housing estates, such as Little Tuscany, and apartment buildings, such as Rome, London and Mont Blanc, which are the continuations of the toponymic model launched in the past. The author embeds this model of names in a broader cultural context by referring to language universals. In addition to the rich collection of the oldest biblical names that have been transferred to present names, transfers of old names can be observed among contemporary names. In the past (in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries), these were mainly the names of countries and, less frequently, those of cities, lands and geographic objects. Today, toponyms are usually based on the names of European cities, attractive geographic objects (lakes, rivers, islands, mountains, volcanoes) and, more rarely, states. While the names of biblical lands were fascinating and attractive in the past, they are almost absent in contemporary names, and if they are present, they concern culturally fixed images such as that of Eden. Both formerly and today, the creators of this kind of names show a longing for the creation of a new world which is no longer inhabited by God in a strictly religious dimension, but a secular one where happiness, peace and joy are sought. In both characterised spaces, the names transferred serve commemorative functions and also imitate coveted spaces which cannot be physically inhabited but can at least be imitated by their names. Formerly, they were real imago mundi representing sacred places (e.g. names such as Calvary). Today, they are created as part of the contemporary architectural tendency for coherence in planning space, names and design.

Consumer experiences as a driver of contemporary brand and marketing management are taken up nowadays by many researchers and academics. It’s merely compelled by bored with generic products and services consumers who much more than ever look for intensive, personalized experiences. However, there is a significant gap in knowledge how to transfer these global changes to the needs of effective tourist product management. The article presents a brand-new approach called ‘the experience key’ for discovering, grouping and converting common, dedicated to a certain destination customers experiences into clear and desirable tourist offer with meaningful competitive impact. One of most important advantages of the methodology is its simplicity and ease-of-use for any professionals involved in destination product management by using well-know research methods and apparent applicability into the process of building and selling tourist offer of a place. The Experience Key can be regarded as a missing link between theoretical considerations led by academics and expectations of tourism industry representatives in the context of applying customer experience to place brand and product management.

This article is devoted to the official forms in the inflection of chosen toponyms in Poland and the variety of dialectal singular and plural place names. The variety of place names often diverges from the rules of language use, and causes language users problems. The toponyms have peculiar, locally used inflected forms; the outside-linguistic (non-linguistic) factors that are social and local factors, play an important role in the inflection of place names. The local population often uses other forms than those recommended by official sources. I focus my attention on the genitive forms of toponyms because it is mainly here that one can see clear variations in the official and local inflection of place names. The material shows that the singular masculine toponyms have genitive endings: -a (in the official variety), -u (in the local variety), for example Biłgoraj, gen. Biłgoraja, but in the local dialect: biłgoraju. The singular feminine place names have genitive endings: -ej (in the official variety), -y||-i (in the local variety): Brzezowa, gen. Brzezowej, but Brzezowy in the local dialect. The plural toponyms have genitive endings: -ø, -ów, -i (-y), but in the local circulation the ending -ów is dominant and demonstrates a wider expansion in use. For example Brzózki, gen. Brzózek, in the local variety Brzuskuf; Budy, official gen. Bud, but Buduf; Burnie, gen. Burni, in the local dialect: Burniuf. The gathered material reflects a hesitation in the inflection of toponyms, as the linguistic customs and presented dialectal records of forms of genit ives of place names show a significantly diverse approach towards the Polish language.