• This blog is not a highlight reel, but rather a summary of my experiences, both positive and negative.
• I dislike sightseeing and overtouristed places. The blog entries will reflect that.
• I will usually discuss urban planning or the economy of a place, or at least as much as I can from the superficial lens of a visitor. In particular, I am interested in the effects of globalization (or the lack thereof) on economies throughout the world.
• No photos or videos on this blog are edited (except for crop/zoom/perspective adjustment).

I like to think about space from a human geography perspective, so it's important for me to distinguish location and place. A location is a set of coordinates on a map. A place is a location made relevant to humans through the application of labor and capital.

Locations are permanent. Places are not - they are constructed, destroyed, linked, and disconnected at the behest of politicians, markets, and laws. Just as a road map models physical links between locations, we can imagine an economic map which models economic links between places. Until recently, there was little reason to distinguish the two - a road map of the world 1000 years ago would have been more or less identical to its economic map, minus a few maritime trading routes - but capitalism, modern technology and free trade have warped this map beyond recognition into an infinitely complex lattice of abstract, substitutable nodes of production and consumption.

To make this more than just a sightseeing blog, I want to capture interesting ways in which this economic map has evolved over time. What happens when the big factory leaves? How can moribund economies reinvent themselves for the 21st century? What is the urban-rural relationship in a post-industrial society? How do multinationals transform local economies? Traveling gives us access to the people with the answer to these questions and allows us to find out for ourselves - it gives us a sense of place.

If you find this stuff interesting, please read Doreen Massey's essay A Global Sense of Place, which goes into much more detail about the relationship between space and place, and Phil A. Neel's book Hinterland, which is simply the best human geographical analysis of modern America there is.