Nicole McGuire-Book Review

Nicole McGuire
Book Review

The book The Hidden Dimension, by Edward T. Hall is a very thoughtful and insightful book towards urban space. He came up with the idea of proxemics (“the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture”(Hall,1) and applied it to humans and how it’s used within different cultures. The theme of this book is how humans recognize space but depending on the culture you come from may view space in a different type of way. Depending on how you grow up is how you view space and how humans keep distance from on another. “Thus it must be impressed upon architects, city planners, and builders that is this country is to avoid catastrophe, we must begin seeing man as an interlocutor with his environment, an environment which these same planners, architects, and builders are now creating with little reference to man’s proxemic needs” (Hall, 6).

The central argument of Hall’s book was that one man’s observation of space comes from different senses that are derived from culture. “Selective screening of sensory data admits some things while filtering out others, so that experience as it is perceived through one set of culturally patterned sensory screens is quiet different from experience perceived through another culture” (Hall, 2). Every culture has different traits and through these different traits people experience different events. But experience does not necessarily make how man views space. Hall then argues that one man’s view of space can cause problems in “cross-cultural relationships”. All cultures have a specific way of how they organize space within their minds and communities. This then leads to problems in communication with one another. “What Gibson has done is to analyze and describe the system and the component “stimulus variables” which combine to provide the information man needs in order to do all that movement implies on the surface of our globe” (Hall, 191). With the senses, man can come up with different types of spaces through his culture and environment.

Some interesting points in Hall’s book was how human’s deal with personal and informal space. People have there personal space were only certain people (close relations such as family and friends) are allowed to invade. Once someone invades someone else’s personal space people back away or even feel offended. Then there is public space which people may interact with other people depending on the situation put do need their space. An example Hall makes of this is when people will normally have a few inches between each other if they are sitting down and no one knows each other. This is very true because even in New York City people will sit in every other seat when waiting for the train just not to invade other people’s space. There are social spaces were people can communicate with strangers and other people without feeling uncomfortable. Throughout the book, the most important point I found was the different perspectives of visual impressions. It wasn’t necessarily his idea, it was Gibson’s ideas, but it was interesting how he connected it to space. “They constitute the basic structural categories of experience into which the more specific varieties of vision fit” (Hall, 191). This relates to space because culture molds how individuals see space through there eyes. “Bioncular perspective operates very much out of awareness” (Hall, 192).

The arguments of this book relate to the themes we have discussed in class through urban planning and public and private spaces. In class we have discussed how cities and neighborhoods have come together, and this relates because all different cultures have different ways of organizing their communities. All humans have different ideas of how they want to organize there spaces which creates the streets and environments people live in. Different uses of spaces can create communication problems through different groups of people and this could also relate to the unfairness of how certain neighborhoods are set up and separated. The use of space is different through all cultures which makes the world an unique urban space.