Final answer:
Place is understood through experiential meaning construction, influenced by media representation and symbolic cities. Scale affects our understanding of place; macro-scales reveal structural patterns explained by the Central Place Theory, while micro-scales uncover personal emotional ties and unique city personalities.
Step-by-step explanation:
Tuan's perspective on place suggests that individuals construct the meaning of a place through their experiences, both direct and indirect. Symbolic representations of cities, such as those delivered through media, contribute significantly to our understanding and opinion formation about places. Cultural imagery and popular narratives help form our conceptions about places like New York, Hollywood, and generic locations such as 'small towns' or 'the suburbs'. However, it is important to recognize that these perceptions may not always align with the realities faced by residents of these places.
Regarding scale and understanding places, the way we perceive a location can change dramatically depending on the scale at which we engage with it. Central Place Theory, for instance, explains how cities, towns, and villages are strategically distributed across a region, which becomes especially evident when we look at these patterns from a larger, perhaps regional or national perspective. On the other hand, individual emotional attachments and the conception of cities as places with unique personalities — a notion encapsulated in the term 'topophilia' — are more discernible at a personal, human scale.
Ultimately, understanding place involves recognizing the sociocultural meanings attached to locations and appreciating that these meanings are shaped by a multitude of factors, from religious significance to economic patterns, all of which can vary greatly depending on the scale of observation.