Yeji Yi

Abstract

The globalized contemporary cities have been just space, but they can be changed to a place full of unique meanings if architectural designers and city planners start to work on shaping residents’ imagination of their cities. Space is an objective location itself, a physical value which can be defined by distance, direction, scale, shape, and so on. Meanwhile, the definition of place goes beyond location, which additionally requires a human’s subjective experience, memory, and meaning. The study aims to guide architectural designers and city planners on how to make cities memorable and meaningful as places by shaping dwellers’ image of cities. Place attachment is a significant tool to create residents’ positive images toward their cities. Given the assumption that a positive sense of place, place attachment, is created when the physical factors of place are appropriately corresponding to the cognitive factors, the study specified four cognitive factors (e.g. satisfaction, interactions & activities, memory & experiences, and time factors) and successful physical characteristics (e.g. green space, social gathering areas, open space that serve diverse activities, and features that promote frequent uses and prolonged occupation, and so on). Finally, unique, meaningful, and sustainable cities can be achieved by providing adequate physical design characteristics congruent with these four cognitive factors.

Keywords: place, place attachment, placemaking, the image of the city, sustainability

Introduction

Place attachment contributes to cities’ sustainability. Literature has revealed the significance of residents’ attachment to their communities in terms of social, psychological, and environmental aspects. People with higher place attachment show increased interests in preserving the social and physical features that characterize their communities (Mesch & Manor, 1998), higher satisfaction of and participation in their communities (Tartaglia, 2012), more place diversity (Ujang, 2008), and greater environmentally responsible behaviors (Vaske & Kobrin, 2001). These positive impacts of place attachment have been a good foundation of achieving sustainability in cities.

However, contemporary urban development tends to weaken dwellers’ place attachment and diminish the depth of place meaning. The weakening of place attachment has been accelerated by globalized architectural forms. In fact, urban cities have been built with relatively homogenous and standardized forms, which diminishes local specificity and diversity of places. Examples include international-style architecture, such as multi-story corporate offices and large-scale shopping complexes. The proliferation of the same building types around the world is likely to disregard the local culture or materials and result in placelessness, which means a place that lacks significant meanings (Relph, 1976). The weakened meaning of place is problematic because it threatens cities’ unique identities as well as their suitability.

Place attachment to urban cities can be evoked through urban design. In Image of the City, Lynch (1960) explored how city inhabitants perceive their surroundings using mental maps and suggested potential guidance for city planners and architectural designers about how to rebuild the cities. According to Lynch (1960), a city is more than a mere organization of physical elements; rather, a city is a comprehensive image that appears to individual city residents. In other words, by designing the perceived image of the city, a city could connect residents with their surroundings, enhancing the meaning of their communities and strengthening their place attachment. Therefore, it becomes architectural designers’ and city planners’ responsibilities to work on shaping city dwellers’ imagination and make the cities’ image more memorable and meaningful, and finally, help them create place attachment to their cities.

How can architectural designers and city planners make cities unique and meaningful as places? To answer this question, it is necessary to thoroughly define the term place, to understand how individuals associate meanings with places, and to explore which factors promote the creation of emotional attachment to the place. The study consists of two parts: one is to define place and place attachment in terms of the interactions between humans and place, and the other is to explore factors that contribute to provoking urban residents’ place attachment, at the same time, increasing sustainability of the cities.

What is Place Attachment?

Defining Place

In early Greek philosophy, the Presocratics constructed theories of space and place (Bucsescu & Eng, 2009). Plato used the term khôra to designate a space. Plato’s concept of space is like a “vacuum”, “a container that received things” (Bucsescu & Eng, 2009, p. 78). Meanwhile, Aristotle used the term topos, Greek for place, to distinguish from the Platonic notion of space. The concept of place is defined by Aristotle as follows: “a thing’s place is its boundary (peras), and its boundary is that which immediately surrounds it (periekhein)”, in other words, “a thing’s place is determined by that which limits it or surrounds it in a maximal sense” (Bucsescu & Eng, 2009, pp. 78 – 79). In this discussion, the key difference between the Platonic space and the Aristotelian place is whether or not humans are involved. The Aristotelian standpoint toward place was the beginning of involving humans in the discussion on the theory of space and place.

Later, the relationship between humans and place is further explained, as the concept of place is discussed in a Phenomenological approach. Phenomenology searches for “the meaning of existence based on an understanding of ourselves as ‘being-in-the-world,’ that is fundamentally defined by and in relation to the world and our relationship to it, both physical and emotional” (Hubbard, 2004, pp. 306 – 307). Heidegger (1958) and Norberg-Schulz (1967) are notable philosophers who discussed the phenomenological thinking about being (existence) in relation to place and space, as well as the notion of dwelling. Based on this philosophical background, Tuan (1977) explored the meaning of space and place. In Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Tuan (1977) explained space stating,

[…] original space possesses structure and orientation by virtue of the presence of the human body. Body implicates space; space coexists with the sentient body. This primitive relationship holds when the body is largely a system of anonymous functions, before it can serve as an instrument of conscious choice and intentions […] The recognition of objects implies the recognition of intervals and distance relation among objects, and hence of space (p. 54).

In his explanation, it can be inferred that space is a location defined by physical values such as distance, scale, and direction. Furthermore, a person in a space is regarded as simply an object.

In contrast, Tuan (1977) illustrated place as follows,

People demonstrate their sense of place when they apply their moral and aesthetic discernment to sites and locations. […] However, other than the all-important eye, the world is known through the senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch. These senses, unlike the visual, require close contact and long association with the environment (p. 56).

In other words, place is a concept that cannot be defined sufficiently by physical values as space can be. Rather, sense of place is defined by one’s consciousness which comes from not only visual but also all other sensory experiences including hearing, smell, taste, and touch. When this comprehensive experience in a space becomes a valuable memory to a certain individual, and one’s unique and special meaning is constructed to space, space then becomes one’s place. Thus, placemaking is the phenomenon that a person perceives a space as a place.

As an example, a park itself is just a space in a specific location. However, suppose that a resident walks in the park every morning, holds family events there, and visits a certain spot frequently to meet with friends. If the resident constructed unique meaning through individual experience, activities, and memory, the park will shift from “one park (space)” to “his/her park (place).” His/her place can be a chair in a park, a shadow under a certain tree, a region along a trail, or the park itself, depending on the situation. Furthermore, his/her place can be differently perceived by him/her from the other residents who share the same space. Regardless of a specific scale or limit, abstract space becomes a concrete place with special meanings. Table 1 summarizes the differences between the concept of space and place.

Table 1.

Distinctive Characteristics of Space and Place

Finally, the presented study defines space as an objective location itself, a physical value which can be defined by distance, direction, scale, shape, and so on. Meanwhile, place goes beyond location, which additionally requires humans’ subjective experience, memory, and meaning.

Defining Terms Regarding Place

Literature has investigated the concept of place with different terms including, but not limited to, a sense of place and place attachment. However, the concepts of these terms are ambiguous, difficult to define or measure, and sometimes used interchangeably. The study defines a sense of place and place attachment as follows:

Sense of place: The term ‘sense of place’ has broad implications. A sense of place can refer to objective characteristics of place itself or subjective perception or feeling of people about places (Hashem, Ali, and Parisa, 2013). This study takes the latter meaning and defines a sense of place as a concept which shifts a typical space to place with special or unique meanings. A sense of place can be developed through special behavior or sensory experiences of certain people (Altman, 1992; Hashem, Ali, and Parisa, 2013). With this definition, a sense of place becomes the mutual relationship between human and place. In other words, people can create positive meanings that foster a sense of authentic attachment and belonging, while others can take negative meanings from the places.

Place attachment: Place attachment is the development of a person’s affective bond to places, which makes the place unique, and at the same time distinct from the other places (Moore and Graefe, 1994; Hidalgo and Hernandez, 2001). Place attachment is the positive response to environments. The place attachment is evolved from interactions between human and place, or activities between human and human in a special place (Relph, 1976; Altman and Low, 1992).

The study aims to guide architectural designers and city planners on how to make cities memorable and meaningful by shaping dwellers’ image of cities. The analysis focuses on creating city dwellers’ positive sense of place, in other words, place attachment. Place attachment is a key tool to control city inhabitants’ imagination. In the next section, the way place attachment forms is investigated, and literature is reviewed on practical urban design strategies that have been successful in creating place attachment.

Which Factors Contribute to Creating Place Attachment?

Factors that Create a Sense of Place

The sense of place has both physical and psychological aspects because an environment consists of a combination of physical and social parameters (Hashem, Ali, and Parisa, 2013). In this context, Steel (1981) contends that there are two categorical factors which create a sense of place: physical characteristic; and cognitive/perceptual factors.

Physical characteristics are an image of a place, which are explained by size, scale, components, diversity, texture, decoration, color, odor, noise, and temperature (Steel, 1981). Such characteristics respond to the function of a place. Physical features mentioned above play a direct role in users’ satisfaction, one of the factors that promote place attachment. As evidence, greater attachment to neighborhoods was observed when one perceives places as abundant, attractive, and uncrowded (Amberger and Eder, 2012).

Cognitive and perceptual factors are associated with information processing that an individual employs his/her meanings to a place. It can be constructed among different people, depending on their experiences, their motivations, and background. Examples are emotional senses or meanings which people perceive from a place, such as pleasant, wonderful, security, vitality, identity, history, and memory (Steel, 1981). These features are emotional connections between people and place and have an effect on the way people communicate with places.

Physical Characteristics Corresponding to Cognitive Factors

Steel (1981) further explains that a sense of place is created when the physical characteristics of place are corresponding to the cognitive and perceptual factors. The study specifies the cognitive and perceptual factors into four aspects: satisfaction, interactions & activities, memory & experiences, and time factors (Hashemnezhad, 2013). Under the identified categorization, literature has been reviewed on the community design cases that have been successful in creating place attachment. Then, the cases’ physical characteristics have been related to the four cognitive and perceptual factors (Figure 1).

Figure 1.Cognitive and Physical Factors that Promote Place Attachment

Satisfaction factors. Place attachment is developed from satisfaction to a place. Satisfaction is formed when one’s needs and expectations about place meet characteristic of a place. Studies have shown that residents’ satisfaction of their communities is increased by factors such as a bond to green places, social communication, and feeling of security.

Kaplan (2001) asserted that the presence of urban nature contributes to greater neighborhood satisfaction. This positive impact of green space is based on the fact that biophilic design has been proven as an essential element for positive emotions like enjoyment, pleasure, interest, and fascination (Beatley, 2010). Studies showed that green, natural settings are preferred, especially by children, rather than man-made environments (Jones and Cunningham, 1999). One study showed that 96 % of children who lived in urban areas draw outdoor scenes as their favorite places (Maller, Townsend, Leger, Henderson-Wilson, Pryor, Prosser, and Moore, 2008).

Literature has revealed the level of satisfaction has been enhanced when one feels physical, social, and emotional security in a place. Places that allow users to conduct social and spatial monitoring contribute to developing personal satisfaction and place attachment. For instance, elderly people in the public park to observe daily life have developed an attachment to the park as well as features within it, such as benches and trees (Carr, 1993).

Interaction and activities factors. The promotion of place attachment is linked to positive interactions between human and place, and activities between human and human in a place. Behavioral, emotional, and cognitive interactions result in creating place meaning and finally, contribute to place attachment (Hashemnezhad et al., 2013).

Place attachment is based on participation, social network engagement, and cultural interactions. The level of attachment has a positive relationship with participation rate (Wolf, Krueger, and Flora, 2014). Specifically, increased social interactions have been observed in walkable cities and mixed-use development (Nasar, Julian, 1995; Plas and Lewis, 1996). As another example, incorporating meaningful, natural environments into cities also promote social communication and feeling of belonging to the community. Community gardens promote not only an emotional attachment to the natural environment but also enhancing social communication. The fostered involvement in the social community makes residents feel as a part of the community and feel satisfaction to their community (Schmelzkopf, 1995).

Distribution of open space in a community is important in creating attachment. Open space design factors that meet the needs of a diverse range of users in activities increased attachment to the place; to be specific, open space that serves activities including walking, biking, or other recreational activities, fostered stronger attachment to the place than those that do not serve physical activities (Ryan, 2005).

A social gathering is another factor. Natural elements in open space encourage people to spend more time outside, creating stronger social ties and friendship with neighbors through spontaneous face-to-face encounters (Kuo and Sullivan, 1998). Outdoor public spaces can carry positive communal meaning. For example, people who live in public housing that have common areas with trees tend to congregate more, meet in bigger groups, and socially interact with a wider range of people of different ages (Coley, Kuo, and Sullivan, 1997).

Memory and experiences factors. A place serves in-depth meaning when people have powerful experiences for a long period of time in the place. Tuan (1977) suggests that place attachment is based on the development of memories. Individuals are likely to remember a place as meaningful, when they have experienced favorite adventures and when the place is part of their experience as a symbol of that experience. Especially, childhood memories play a vital role in creating place attachment. Literature reveals that attachments formed in childhood toward a place where the child has lived are often stronger than those formed later in his/her life (Morgan, 2009). People who find street, façade, or playground designs similar to their childhood memory showed higher attachment to their neighborhood (Morgan, 2009).

Time factors. Place attachment is affected by visitation pattern and length of residency. Literature has shown frequent uses and prolonged occupation foster creating place attachment. Moore and Greafe’s (1994) revealed the significance of the frequent use of place, by proving residents who frequently used trails near their homes were likely to express a stronger attachment. Spending more time in a place is also addressed in literature. Thwaites (2001) asserted sitting under a particular tree or on a specific park bench promotes a sense of temporary ownership and place attachment. Furthermore, Ryan (2006) investigated park design features that can increase the occupation time and encourage attachment to the park. Specifically, the design factors included a variety of seating options, water features, food vendors, and comfortable microclimates (Ryan, 2006).

Place attachment is also associated with length of residency in a place. The greater amount of time, energy, and investment to a place are related to stronger attachment (Taylor, 1996). Local residents are likely to have a privileged sense of place, since they have been educated on the meaning of values of their local landscape (Stewart, Libert, and Larkin, 2003). Since the process of creating an attachment to a place is distinctive depending on time, it is important to understand different factors that promote place attachment between long-term residents and short-term visitors. McCool and Martin (1994) investigated that social and cultural interactions were crucial factors for long-term residents in order to be attached to a place, while physical landscapes that capture visitors’ interests played a key role in developing place attachment in a short period of time.

Conclusion

Cities can shift from one city (space) to one’s city (place). The globalized contemporary cities have been just space, but they can be changed to a place full of unique meanings if architectural designers and city planners start to work on shaping residents’ imagination of their cities. The study suggests place attachment as a significant tool to create residents’ positive images toward their cities.

Admittedly, there are possibilities that place attachment can have negative side effects. For instance, groups of people with strong place attachment could cause conflicts toward culturally different groups, because the attached people could perceive the new residents as threating factors that can alter the established characteristics of the areas. Also, place attachment could interrupt local development if residents feel that their attached places might be changed to places they no longer have emotional bonds.

However, literature has shown that the advantages of place attachment outweigh the disadvantages. Place attachment helps to enhance community bonding and sustainability. Residents who are more attached to their community create higher levels of social cohesion, greater awareness of the environment, and contribute to the livability of the neighborhood. Thus, architectural designers and city planners should design cities to which dwellers can be attached. The study organized design factors that promote place attachment into four cognitive categories: satisfaction, interaction & activities, memory & experience, and time factors. The physical factors were identified green space, social gathering areas, open space that serve diverse activities, and features that promote frequent uses and prolonged occupation, and so on. Finally, unique, meaningful, and sustainable cities can be achieved by providing appropriate physical design characteristics corresponding to the cognitive factors.

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