It was while he was at Minnesota that he became known for his work in humanistic geography, but his forays into this approach began earlier with an article on topophilia that appeared in the journal Landscape.

After Tuan became an emeritus professor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he would still occasionally gave lectures, continue to write his "Dear Colleague" letters and to publish new books on geosophy.

He works to show nuances of common phenomena such as the experience of "home" that cut across cultural divides even as they reveal distinct manifestations in different places and times.

[9] To do so requires empathy, and for this he seeks assistance from literature, the arts, history, biography, social science, philosophy, and theology.

"[10] Tuan is most interested in ambivalent human experiences that resonate with the opposing pulls of space and place, the intimate and the distant.

His approach is suggested by titles such as Segmented Worlds and Self, Continuity and Discontinuity, Morality and Imagination, Cosmos and Hearth, Dominance and Affection, and above all, Space and Place.

Therefore, ambivalence is the norm when it comes to the human experience of dwelling in the world with its existential pulls between space and place, mobility and stasis, the distant view and embodied engagement.

[16] For Tuan, historical changes have been for the better overall: "In the larger view, the human story is one of progressive sensory and mental awareness ... culture, through laborious and labyrinthine paths traversed over millennia, has greatly and variedly refined our senses and mind.

"[17] Progress itself depends on particular ways of dealing with the tensions between space and place, cosmos and hearth, dominance and affection, morality and imagination.

[18] Throughout his works, texts such as poems, novels, letters, and myths are understood as integral elements in the creation of a sense of place.

Tuan's deep reflection on the role of representation in the creation of place forms an important foundation for the geography of media and communication.