Places and non-places are opposed like their words and notions

Places and non-places are opposed (or attracted) like the words and notions that enable us to describe them. But the fashionable words – those that did not exist thirty years ago – are associated with non-places. Thus we can contrast the realities of transit (transit camps or passengers in transit) with those of residence or dwelling; the interchange (where nobody crosses anyone else's path) with the crossroads (where people meet); the passenger (defined by his destination) with the traveller (who strolls along his route – significantly, the SNCF still calls its customers travellers until they board the TGV; then they become passengers), the housing estate ('group of new dwellings', Larousse says), where people do not live together and which is never situated in the centre of anything (big estates characterize the so-called peripheral zones or outskirts), with the monument where people share and commemorate; communication (with its codes, images and strategies) with language (which is spoken).

Marc Augé, Non-Places (Verso, 2008) pp. 86-87