Investigation of place attachment to three scales of home, neighborhood and city, (Case study: Shiraz city)

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

Attachment to place is the fourth level of the sense of place, which is the complex emotional relationship with place. A number of studies have been carried out into the notion of attachment to one or more locations around the world. In these studies, the same issue has been looked upon from different perspectives, thus leading to different results.  The present study aims to assess the relationship between intensity of attachment to place and scale of the place, taking a fresh approach. Accordingly, the factors contributing to the attachment to place have been examined in three "physical", "socio- demographic" and "emotional" dimensions. Physical factors have been divided into three scales of house, neighborhood and city. Social-demographic factors have been generalized to such variables as age, gender, level of education etc. Emotional factors have been extracted from 21 indices in the literature related to the concepts of place and attachment to place. In this research, 12 emotional and experiential cases were evaluated for each of the three place scales of interest for people with different demographic characteristics in Shiraz. In constructing the questionnaire, we made use of the Likert scale. The questionnaire consists of three sections. The first section was about seeking such demographic information as age, gender, level of education, etc. The second section consisted of questions investigating the different emotions of people toward three place scales. This section consists of three parts dealing with 12 indices for evaluation of the emotions of people (as considered in the theoretical framework of the study) of three scales of home, neighborhood and city separately. The third section consisted of the open-ended questions, dealing with the reasons and motivations of people in terms of their attachment to various place scales. The analysis of data has been accomplished using repeated measures and One-way ANOVA in which the mean value of the response by the participants in terms of each of the 12 indices of home, neighborhood and city was calculated. In order to analyze the qualitative data, we made use of content analysis to analyze the data obtained through open-ended questions. The results show that for the Shiraz citizens, the city scale has the highest level of intensity of attachment. They prefer to express the highest level of their emotional feelings to their urban space. The attachment to home is the second highest and the neighborhood is the Third. Factors such as “disappearance of neighborhood boundaries”, “diminishing of the neighborhood social function”, “the lack of specified physical context”, and finally “the movement of habitants to different neighborhoods” are the most important reasons justifying the low sense of attachment to the scale of neighborhood. The result revealed that out of the variables in question, two variables of age and the period of residence have direct effect on the intensity of attachment, which means that the attachment of people to various scales of place for various age groups, and also by increases in the duration of residence appear differently in the their home, neighborhood and city.
 

Keywords

References

بحرینی، حسین (1377)،  فرایند طراحی شهری، انتشارات دانشگاه تهران، تهران.
 دانشپور، سیدعبدالهادی؛ سپهری مقدم، منصور و چرخچیان، مریم (1388)، جایگاه دانش روانشناسی محیطی در ساختمان­های بلند مرتبه با رویکرد معماری پایدار، نشریههویتشهر، سال سوم، شماره پنجم، صص 29 -38.
 حیدری، علی اکبر؛ مطلبی، قاسم و نکوئی­مهر، فاطمه (1393 الف)، بررسی نحوه ارتباط میان دو مفهوم حس مکان و دلبستگی به مکان در خوابگاه دانشجویان، نشریه هنرهای زیبا- معماری و شهرسازی، دوره 19، شماره 1، صص 15 -22.
 حیدری، علی اکبر؛ مطالبی، قاسم و نگین­تاجی، فروغ (1393ب)، تحلیل بعد کالبدی حس تعلق به مکان در خانه­های سنتی و مجتمع­های مسکونی امروزی، نشریه هنرهای زیبا- معماری و شهرسازی، دوره 19، شماره 3، صص 75 -86.
 سرمست، بهرام­ و متوسلی، محمد مهدی (1389)، ­بررسی و تحلیل نقش مقیاس شهر در میزان حس تعلق به مکان مطالعه موردی: شهر تهران، مدیریتشهری، شماره بیست و ششم، صص 133 – 146.
Altman, I & Setha Low (ed.) (1992), Place Attachment, Plenum Press, New York.          
 Bonaiuto, M; Aiello, A; Perugini, M; Bonnes, M & Ercolani, A.P (1999), Multidimensional Environment quality and neighbourhood attachment, Urban Environment, 19, pp. 331-352.
 Brown, B; Perkins, D. D & Brown, G (2003), Place attachment in a revitalizing neighborhood: individual and block levels of analysis, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23, pp.259–27.
 Brown, B. B & Perkins, D. D (1992), Disruptions in place attachment, In I. Altman, & S. M. Low (Eds.), Human behavior and environments: Advances in theory and research, Place Attachment, 12, pp.279-304.
 Chawla, L (1992), Childhood place attachments, In I. Altman and S. Low (Eds.), Place Attachment, New York, Plenum Press, pp.63-86.
 Cohen, Y.S & Shinar, A (1985), Neighborhoods and Friendship Networks, the University of Chicago, Chicago.
 Coulton, C. J; Korbin, J; Chan, T & Su, M (2001), Mapping residents’ perceptions of neighborhood boundaries: a methodological note, American Journal of Community Psychology, 29, pp.371–383.
 Gifford, R (2002), Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practice, Canada, Optimal Books.
 Gieryn, T. F (2000), A space for place in sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, 26, pp.463–496.
 Hidalgo, M. C & Hernandez, B (2001), Place attachment: conceptual and empirical questions, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21, pp.273–281
 Jacobs, M (1995), Sustainability and community: Environment, economic rationalism and sense of place, Australian Planner, 32 (2), pp.109 - 115.
 Jordan, T (1996), Recent German research on space-related attachment and regional identities, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, 78, pp.99–111.
 Jorgensen, B. S & Stedman, R. C (2001), Sense of place as an attitude: lakeshore propertyowners’ attitudes toward their properties, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21, pp.233-248.
 Kaplan, S & Kaplan, R (1982), Humanscape: Environments for people, Ann Arbor, Ulrich's Books.
 Korpela, K & Hartig, T (1996), Restorative qualities of favorite places, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, pp.221-233.
 Lapinitie, I (2007), Modalities of Urban Space, Sage Publications Forthcoming in Planning Theory, 6 (1), pp.36-51.
 Lewicka, M (2010),  Effects of place scale on place attachment, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30 (2010) 35–51.
 Mesch, G.S & Manor, O (1998), Social tie, environmental perception and local Attachment, Environment and Behavior, 30(4), pp. 504-519.
 Marcus, C.C (1992), Environmental memories, In Low, S.M. and Altman, I.(Eds.) Place Attachment, Plenum Press, New York.
 Milligan, M.J (1998), Interactional past and potential: the social construction of place attachment, Symbolic Interaction, 21(1), pp.1-33.
 Morgan, P (2010), Toward a Developmental Theory of Place Attachment, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, pp.11-22.
 Prentice, D.A & Miller D.T (1992), When smalleffects are impressive, Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), pp.160-164.
 Riley, R (1992), Attachment to the Ordinary Landscape, In I. Altman and S. M. Low (Eds.), Place Attachment, Plenum Press, New York.
 Rubinstein, R.L and Parmelee, P.A (1992), Attachment to place and representation of the life course by the elderly, In I. Altman and S. M. Low (Eds.), Place Attachment, Plenum Press, New York.
 Scannell, L & Gifford, R (2010), Defining Place Attachment: A Tripartite Organizing Framework, Journal of Psychology, 30, pp.1-10.
 Scherl, L.M (1989), Self in wilderness: Understanding the psychological benefits of individual-wilderness interaction through self-control, Leisure Sciences, 11, pp.123-135.
 Shamai, Shmuel (1991), Sense of place: An empirical measurement, Isreael, Geoforum volume 22, pp. 347- 358.
 Shamai, S & Ilatov, Z (2005), Measuring sense of place: methodological aspects, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 96, 467–47
 Shumaker, S.A & Taylor, R.B (1983), toward a clarification of people-place relationships: Amodel of attachment to place, In N. R. Feimer and E. S. Geller (Eds.), Environmental Psychology: Directions and perspectives, New York, Praeger, pp.119-251.
 Stedman, R. C (2003), Is it really just a social construction? The construction of the physical environment to sence of place, Society & Natural Resources, 16(8): 671 – 685.
 Taylor, R.B; Gottfredson, S.D & Brower, B (1985), Attachment to place: Discriminant validity, and impacts of disorder and diversity, American Journal of Community Psychology, 13, pp. 525-542.
 Tuan, Y. F (1980), Rootedness versus sense of place, Landscape, 24, pp. 3-8.
Journal of Fine Arts: Architecture & Urban Planning
Volume 23, Issue 3
September 2019
Pages 95-106

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics