Perspectives let you display faceted understandings of a place. 

Perspectives are specific to the Places Knowledge Maps site. They let you switch between different place trees, each with a different "perspective" or focus. This lets you create nuanced relationships between two places. Let's consider the relationship between Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Charlottesville is "in" Albemarle geographically, but Albemarle isn't the county for the city. Instead, Charlottesville is an independent city. Residents will use "Charlottesville" as their county and city in official forms.


Charlottesville is not within Albemarle administratively. From the administrative units Perspective we have the following tree:

Charlottesville is within Albemarle geographically. From the geographical regions Perspective, this becomes: 

You can switch perspectives from the Knowledge Maps editors by selecting Perspectives from the Main Menu. We've included a detailed step-by-step guide at the bottom of the page. We've also listed each perspective here, with examples. 

List of Perspectives

Switching Perspectives

  1. Go to the places editor at places.kmap.virginia.edu
  2. Click on the Main Menu icon
  3. Click Settings
  4. Click Perspectives
  5. Choose the perspective you want to see