Sacred Site Mapping is a process pioneered by Randolph Hester in Manteo, NC. This process identifies the "sacred spaces" of a community through mapping, inquiry and validation, combining observation techniques with information gathered from citizens.
Randolph Hester, Jr., a landscape architect at the University of California-Berkley, pioneered this approach in the Town of Manteo, NC in the early 1980s. The participatory process assists a community with identifying its “sacred structure”—the buildings, places, and landscapes that are central to its function and character.
Sacred sites, according to Hester, are rarely the loveliest vistas or most striking buildings—they are humble, often homely elements that are nonetheless at the center of a community’s daily life. Sacred places may also be evident only in the background of community awareness—he found that it often takes work, and a way of looking at a community from a fresh perspective—for citizens to notice the most special places around them.
In general, the process of mapping sacred spaces involves three main steps:
In a first attempt to identify sacred spaces, Hester conducted informal interviews and asked people about the most important places in their community. He then used the process of “behavior mapping” to test the responses—he walked around the town, noted the places that people congregated and used, and identified the functions and uses of those places. He found ironically that the places people said were important were often not the places that he observed to be most critical to social functioning and town character.
Hester then “validated” his research using a newspaper survey, asking people to rank the value of the places he identified. Those places ranked highest by respondents were considered most important to save or enhance. Hester finally translated the results into maps of the sacred spaces and guidelines for development or conservation.
Post new comment