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Hough, Michael. Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.

Author Michael Hough describes Out of Place as a book about what makes sense of place: "how the forces of human and nonhuman nature have, in the past, created characteristic and distinctly identifiable landscapes and how they are shaping the postindustrial landscape today." Within the context of postindustrialism, a major objective of this work is to examine various forces in contemporary society that obscure the influences that at one time gave uniqueness to place. Market forces and technologies, Hough argues, are the imperatives driving contemporary cities and these have led to a lack of identity both in cities and regional landscapes. Finding it nearly impossible to talk about landscapes in isolation of humans, Hough's chapter on "the cultural landscape" explores the links between vernacular forms, nature, culture, history, and politics or central authority. Here he is especially interested in illustrating the influence culture has had on the creation of unique landscapes from similar natural ones. Distinctive regional forms, he shows, have come as responses to local materials and basic needs and represent the coming together of natural forces, cultural history, and changing technologies. Aesthetic values, he contends, have little to do with the creation of vernacular landscapes. It is this uniqueness or distinctiveness that disappears through planning, a theme which surfaces in subsequent chapters on the urban region and the loss of identity--here the author investigates shopping malls and urban expressways--and on placelessness surrounding tourism. Throughout this book Hough draws a number of important lessons from vernacular environments, supported by observations from firsthand encounters with places visited or lived in. Interested in solutions to problems affecting regional identity, the author concludes with an outline of principles for an appropriate design philosophy. [B. Johansen]