Why Do We Fall in Love with Places?

In an era where our workdays are increasingly dominated by screens and virtual interactions, understanding our relationship with physical places has never been more crucial. This is why I’m excited to announce the launch of my new YouTube series, Read.With.Me. In the Read.With.Me series, I share influential books in the domain of human geography and explore their relevance to workplace strategy.

In the debut episode, I dive into “Topophilia” by late Professor Yu-Tuan, a groundbreaking 1974 work that explores our emotional connections to places. While the book was written almost 50 years ago, its insights are remarkably relevant to our current digital transformation of work.

Why Topophilia Matters Now

Topophilia, meaning “love of place” (topo = place, filia = love), examines how humans develop meaningful connections to their environments. In our increasingly digital workplaces, understanding these connections becomes crucial for creating effective workplace strategies. As many of us shift between home offices, co-working spaces, and traditional offices, the question of how we form attachments to places takes on new significance.

The Sensory Experience of Place

One of the most fascinating aspects of Topophilia is its exploration of how we experience places through our senses. While our eyes provide the most information about our environment, it’s our other senses that often create deeper, more emotional connections to places. Consider how the sound of workplace conversations creates atmosphere, or how certain smells can instantly transport us to specific locations and memories.

Sensory Deprived Ways of Working

Perhaps the most striking revelation from this exploration is about sensory awareness. While knowledge workers spend most of their time interacting with screens—primarily engaging their sense of sight—they’re missing out on the rich, multi-sensory experiences that create meaningful connections to places. This sensory deprivation in our digital work environments might explain why many people feel disconnected or fatigued after long days of virtual interactions.

Filling Our Experience Cup

As we continue to navigate the future of work, these insights from Topophilia suggest we might need to deliberately create more sensory-rich experiences in our work environments. This could mean incorporating regular changes in work location (like occasional cafe work sessions), or designing workplaces that engage all our senses, not just our vision.

Want to explore these ideas further? Watch the full episode below.

In future episodes, we’ll continue exploring seminal works in human geography and their applications to modern place experiences.