Research On The Placeness Formation Mechanism Of Urban Historical Cultural Consumption Space

“Place” is a meaningful space, as well as one of the core concepts of human geography. Since 1970, humanistic geographers, represented by Yi-Fu Tuan and Relph have reintegrated the concept of “place” into the geographical study horizon, then the studies of place has been paid increasingly more attention. And as the extension and expansion of the concept of “place”, “placeness” is a specificity of which one place is different from other places which taking people as the subject, and it is composed by various strategies, logic and knowledge system, with unique local sense of place.Under the background of globalization, modern cities expand rapidly, and the inner-city consumption space of “placelessness” springing up along with it. Postmodern consumption space is not only a place with general economic behaviors of daily social life, but also a complex field mainly for connecting the society and space, what’s more, it also plays a very important part in the creation and performance of local sense.This study selects a typical historical cultural consumption space Datang Mall of Xi’an as the case, using a large number of qualitative research methods including participatory and non-participatory observation, questionnaire and in-depth interviews to gather relevant information and data as the firsthand sources. Based on the new-culture geographic perspective, this article makes detailed analysis of the placeness mechanism of Datang Mall from urban landscape, commercial business and consumers of consumption space, in order to explore the construction mechanisms of placeness and significance of historical culture consumption space in modern city, and proposes appropriate countermeasures and suggestions. Research on the formation mechanism of Datang Mall is made with the expectation of actively enhancing local industrial development, to promote the continuous construction of urban consumption space.The study has shown that, as a typical city historical cultural consumption space, Datang Mall has distinctive placeness characteristics. First, the urban landscape can effectively construct the placeness of historical cultural consumption. Secondly, local industries contribute to the sustainable development of historical cultural consumption space. Finally, consumers’ sense of place is the active force of the placeness creation of the historical cultural consumption space.