A Socio-Spatial Framework for Assessing Community Well Being through Engagement with Heritage Infrastructure

Eirini Gallou (Institute for Sustainable Heritage, The Bartlett, UCL)

The paper aims to share a new socio-spatial framework and approach for assessing well being impacts for communities through engagement with heritage infrastructure. Existing literature on evaluation of community resilience and well being is divided between two substantially developed bodies of work aligned to sociology, social psychology and environmental design, environmental psychology. The paper concurs with recent academic voices that advocate for considering interrelations between social capital and sense of place and will suggest a novel approach to do so. The insights are based on the doctoral research realised in rural Scotland a context rich in natural and cultural assets to which communities are strongly attached. The paper will firstly discuss forms of attachment in relation to local behaviours of engagement in management and planning of those assets.

Qualitative analysis of a set of interviews with local 42 residents and planners, will identify extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of attachment with place and specifically with heritage assets. The effect of social structure and community bonds on space-related behaviours towards protecting place and landscape will be exemplified as part of the findings. Later, the formation of an analytical framework which combines aspects of sense of place with those of social capital will be presented together with its process of creation-emergence through an inductive approach to data analysis.

The paper will discuss the particularities of social context (scale of communities, types of social bonds) for differentiating behaviour towards physical environment and critically reflect on similar discussions in urban contexts. Finally, the paper will discuss the value of the framework for informing research around multi-factorial predictors of community well being and adaptation of framework for use in other contexts will be critically assessed.