I'm not very familiar with the concept of place vs. non-place, but I will attempt to respond to it. We talked in class about airport being the ultimate non-place. I agree with this in some ways, but disagree in others. Again, my unfamiliarity with the concept may limit the relevancy of my response, but since it's the first week of class, I'm not too worried about it.
I used to work a job that made me travel all around the U.S. We would do audio/visual for different companies everywhere from San Francisco to New York City. I saw a lot of airports and hotels during this time in my life. One thing I noticed is that a lot of airports are trying to establish an identity that matches the city or state in which they belong to. Take SLC for example: In recent years I have noticed an increase in historical and artistic displays that in some way represent Utah. The same goes for other airports I have visited.
On the other hand, many of the hotels I stayed in didn't have much of an identity at all. Therefore, I would say that hotels are the ultimate non-place. Hotel after hotel was the same exact place to me. Bed, TV, bathroom, mini-bar. Nothing creating a unique identity. The one exception I can think of was the Gaylord Texan resort in Dallas. But what do you expect from a resort in Texas called the Texan?
Hopefully this gets at the point at least a little bit.
I agree that airports are attempting to tether themselves to a sense of place. I wonder, though, if the *experience* of the airport complicates matters (the stripping of indentity, the very thing that we can imagine as capable of finding value in the tethering??). Can you point to a passage in Auge with which you do find some sense of agreement?
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