Expanding Places through Spaces of Engagement: Connecting Multiple Scales of Decision Making in the Context of Landscape Disturbance Abstract/Chapter Draft for Place and Decision Making Book

Places are not static, bounded spots on the earth. As people live out their everyday lives, their interactions are continually creating and changing places. People-place interactions have been well documented in the literature, particularly how interactions within places shape local identities, social organization, natural resource decision making, and the meanings of places across landscapes (Cheng, Kruger and Daniels 2003; Brandenburg and Carroll 1995; Kemmis 1990; Stewart and Daniels 1998). This chapter extends these investigations of place to consider extra-local linkages across space and scale in shaping place-oriented decision making drawing on human geography and community sociology literatures. Staeheli (2003, p. 162) described place as the result of a “layering of activities that constantly make and remake it. ” Drawing on Massey’s (1979) geologic metaphor, Staeheli (2003) highlighted the role of human activity over time in constructing and constituting places. Yet place is more than a mere product of human action, it is also a dynamic process. In other words, places are always “becoming ” (Pred 1984). This dynamic notion of place relies on an appreciation that decisions and actions at individual