Aneesh Sathe<p><strong>Problems are Places, Questions are Spaces</strong></p><p class="">Last year, while regrouping myself and rebuilding my old curious ways, I had a thought. The common words “spaces” and “places” pass through our minds, fingers, and lips but they deserve a second thought. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the first one to consider this and the wealth of reading material helped me write <em><a href="https://aneeshsathe.com/2025/04/29/we-need-homes-in-the-delta-sector/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">We Need Homes in the Delta Quadrant</a></em>. Spaces and places have been an enjoyable lens to look through.</p><p>Recently, through <a href="https://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/a-callard" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Agnes Callard</a>’s <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Open-Socrates-Case-Philosophical-Life/dp/1631498460" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Open Socrates</a></em>, I was introduced to the Socratic concepts of questions and problems. Initially I thought of it as a newish way to look at things, but I’m converging toward the idea that <strong>problems are places and questions are spaces</strong>. A quick exploration below as to why.</p><a href="https://aneeshsathe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-from-rawpixel-id-2577-jpeg.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"></a>Vintage pattern illustration. Digitally enhanced from our own 19th Century Grammar of Ornament book by Owen Jones.<p>Problems impede your quest and solving them makes them disappear. There are established ways of solving problems—recipes, algorithms, or rituals that nudge the obstacle aside so the original activity may continue unabated. Essentially, problems are tractable.</p><p>Places are tractable too as “an ordered worlds of meaning.” Place-making, like problem-solving, begins by <strong>drawing a boundary</strong> and then treating that encapsulation as a building black, whatever its inner workings. The moment you can stand somewhere and say “here” you have marked out a place; the moment you can name a difficulty and say “do this” you have packaged a problem.</p><p>The Socratic question, by contrast, is a quest. It is a hunt whose solution is unknown. Questions do not disappear when solved, instead they are additive and leave you with something, i.e. the solution. A real question insists on <strong>orientation before action</strong>: you must find north in the wilderness before plotting any march. And yet, along the path to an answer, you inevitably solve problems. Those problems are the markers that help you orient and keep you moving. A previous “solution” to a question can be used as a new place to further explore and prod at the question. In that sense, a question is like the horizon you constantly seek.</p><p>Spaces feel exactly like that horizon. Spaces are pure potential to be explored by the places that demarcate the space. Identity, orientation, and even memory of a space are created by and stored in the places that surround it. To explore a space you must create stable places around it</p><p>While the new way of thinking about Questions and Problems is great, I still prefer the lens of Spaces and Places. Q&P seem too narrow a set of lenses limited to the human mind. S&P expand that stage and allow us to think of more in that context. What I like even more is that spaces can also be places assuming we allow a boundary to be drawn around the fuzzy nature of a space. As a scientist, this feels a bit more satisfying because it allows you to explore and experiment even when the knowledge isn’t properly tied down by facts. </p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/agnes-callard-2/" target="_blank">#AgnesCallard</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/cognitive-frameworks/" target="_blank">#cognitiveFrameworks</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/conceptual-metaphors/" target="_blank">#conceptualMetaphors</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/curiosity/" target="_blank">#curiosity</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/epistemology/" target="_blank">#epistemology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/knowledge-exploration/" target="_blank">#knowledgeExploration</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/philosophy/" target="_blank">#philosophy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/place-theory/" target="_blank">#placeTheory</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/placemaking/" target="_blank">#placemaking</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/questions-and-problems/" target="_blank">#questionsAndProblems</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/scientific-inquiry/" target="_blank">#scientificInquiry</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/socratic-method/" target="_blank">#socraticMethod</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/space-and-place/" target="_blank">#spaceAndPlace</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/systems-thinking/" target="_blank">#systemsThinking</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/yi-fu-tuan/" target="_blank">#yiFuTuan</a></p>
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Creative Bureaucracy Festival 2024 am 13.6. in #Berlin. Wer ist alles auch mit dabei?
Teilnehmende aus #Verwaltung, #Politik & Gesellschaft kommen beim #CreativeBureaucracy Festival zusammen, um Innovationen im öffentlichen Sektor zu teilen, zu diskutieren, bisserl zu streiten, viel voneinander zu lernen und neue Ideen zu feiern.
https://creativebureaucracy.org/
#DigitaleVerwaltung #SmartCity #KreativeStadt #StadtNachAcht #sn8 #Daten #Demokratier #Bildung #PlaceMaking #Verwaltung #KRISIS 
Just had a lovely meeting in the alpine bar in #Bournemouth on a very wet December evening with m'colleagues from the little team that made the town centre summit two weeks ago today. Change can feel weird and uncomfortable, but it feels too like we took the first step for my brilliant and frustrating home town.
Helping to creatively make the place where we live and feel we should be, that's how we make the futures we want.
Friday's #UnseeTheFuture expo.
www.linkedin.comTimo Peach on LinkedIn: Forget global summits, your town centre is a big symbol of the future – so…Why do you want to be anywhere?
You don't need to travel to COP28 to get involved with changing the world. You can most influence the future in the world on…
Frisch aus der "Kommunikationswerkstatt": die Nachbarn und das Quartier rund um die Kaiserstraße dürfen sich auf Post freuen.
#placemaking
New #simonicity #planning blog post, What Should We Call The Planning Version Of Trussenomics? And A Pox On The PEx PAX
SIMONICITYWhat Should We Call The Planning Version Of Trussenomics? And A Pox On The PEx PAXIs the planning system now in a holding pattern until the general election? It certainly feels that way. The consultation announced in December 2022 over proposed changes to the NPPF (see my 22 Dec…
Added more #books & new #environmentalist #stickers to my #LittleFreeLibrary in #Wsanec #Saanich #VictoriaBC 
- it's the only LFL on Kamloops Ave.
Someone donated an #ElonMusk book yesterday 
Leonard Cohen looming large over central #Montreal. Johnny Cash looking over central #Sacramento (not far down the road from Folsom Prison). Some folks don’t like these, but I do, for their role in place-making and urban story-telling.
Plus they address a really big, boring blank wall.
Curious cat! 
Stuff I'm interested in: #placemaking #greatpublicspaces #creativity #connection #painting #art #music #figuredrawing #drawing #portraitdrawing #gardening #books #cats #bigcats #nature #photography #birds #science #tech #writing #politics #community #sciencefiction #scifi #films #urbandesign #stories #architecture #libraries #design #intro #startrek #starwars #ghibli #kindness #empathy #publicart #Canada #democracy #inclusion #mastoart #birdphotography #wildlife #musicals
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This is a film by Ste Murray for Irish Architecture Foundation's Open House Dublin Festival in 2021 in which I cycle the recently completed Coastal Mobility Route from Booterstown to Sandycove with Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council architect, Bob Hannan and we chat about #Urbanism, #Architecture, #ActiveTravel, #Placemaking and lots more
If I ever did an introduction toot, it was a long time ago.
I'm a recovering academic Geographer (ABD). I now work in something unrelated. I live in #Denton #Texas
My interests include #placemaking #politics #uspolitics #txpolitics #running #activetransportation #transit #urbandevelopment #landscape #economics #economicdevelopment #history
I am a longtime #SDF user and came to #Mastodon through some post in #bboard in 2018
I'm not a programmer or developer, but I love to program.