Thesis (M.S.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-96). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Adaptation has increasingly come to be recognised as an urgent and necessary response to climate change. The ability of a system to carryout adaptation is dependent on its adaptive capacity. To date, the majority of research relating to adaptation has focused on the objective and material determinants of a system's capacity to adapt to severe and extreme weather impacts. Whereas the role that subjective factors, such as people's perceptions, beliefs and values play in that same process, has received comparatively less attention. Despite being a global phenomenon, climate change is being experienced and responded to in local places. More than just physical locations, places are often imbued with meaning by the people associated with them. This thesis argues that these meanings have implications for the ways in which people adapt, or fail to adapt, to climate change impacts. It uses the concept 'sense of place', as a means of capturing this place meaning and as a lens for exploring adaptive behaviours in three low-income urban communities in the Dominican Republic. In particular it examines the specific roles of residents' place attachment, dependence and identity in motivating and constraining adaptive behaviours. Based on qualitative research with ethnographic underpinnings, the thesis shows that the urban poor sense of place is shaped by interconnected relationships between residents and; their homes, the physical and social aspects of their communities and a range of non-community actors. These relationships are shaped by physical and social interactions with and within places, but also through the discursive construction of the locations and the inhabitants of them in public opinion. Residents continuously seek out ways to enhance their sense of place, at times as an improvement in the built environment as a means of preventing or ameliorating environmental threats and events. However, often it is enhancement, in an aesthetic sense, which is envisaged as being of equal and sometimes greater importance. Although aesthetic improvements sometimes have the resultant impact of enabling adaptation, this tends to be incidental, rather than purposeful. Despite the importance placed by the urban poor on their sense of place, these subjective determinants and adaptation in the urban environment, remain unrecognised as well as absent from local institutional and policy radars. Overall the research suggests the need for a more comprehensive approach to understanding adaptive capacities. It requires an approach which continues to measure the objective determinants but which also recognises the role of people's relationships to places in converting or failing to convert objective capacity into climate change action and in dictating the type activities that are valued and prioritised by urban poor residents themselves.

A more water-coherent approach is postulated as a primary pathway through which biophilic urbanism contributes to livability and climate change adaptation. Previous studies have shown that upstream water retention is more cost-effective than downstream for mitigating flood risks downstream. This dissertation proposes a research design for generating an iconography of water urbanism to make upstream cities more coherent. I tested a hypothesis of aquaphilic urbanism as a water-based sense of place that evokes water-based place attachment to help adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Cognitive mapping, photovoice, and emotional recall protocols were conducted during semi‐structured interviews with 60 residents and visitors sampled from eight water-centric cities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The participants provided 55 sketch maps. I performed content analyses, regression analyses, path analyses, and mediation analyses to study the relationships of 1) pictorial aquaphilia (intrinsic attachment to safe and clean water scenes) and waterscape imageability, 2) waterscape imageability and the coherence of city image, 3) egocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-based spatial anchors) and allocentric aquaphilia (attachment to water-centric cities), and 4) the coherence of city image, allocentric aquaphilia, and openness towards water-coherent urbanism. Content analyses show that waterscape imageability and pictorial aquaphilia were the two most common reasons why participants mentioned the five waterscape types, including water landmarks, canals, lakes, rivers, and harbors, during the three recall protocols. Regression analyses indicate that water is a sixth element of imageability and that the imageable structure of canals and rivers and the identifiability of water landmarks significantly influenced the aesthetic coherence of city image. Path analyses suggest that allocentric aquaphilia can be attributed to water-based familiarity, water-based place identity (or identifiability), water-based comfort, and water-based place dependence (or orientation) evoked by water-based spatial anchors. Mediation analyses reveal that water-based goal affordance (as a construct of water-based comfort and water-based place dependence) aided environmental adaptation, while water-based imageability (as a construct of water-based familiarity and water-based place identity) helped adapt cities and individuals to water-coherent urbanism. Canal mappability mediated the effects of gender and of visitor versus resident on the coherence of city image to facilitate environmental adaptation.

Doctor of Philosophy / Geography / Lisa M. Harrington / The population of the American Great Plains has grown steadily but unevenly. While metropolitan areas − primarily on the peripheries of the Plains − have expanded, significant interior portions have experienced decades of outmigration and the challenges that accompany the exodus. Geographers have explored the interplay between rural population loss and service consolidation, the many reasons people leave, the age-specific dynamics of those leaving, and the varied strategies being employed at different scales to coax people back. The vantage point of the residents who remain in emptying spaces has received little attention, however. Grounded theory guided a sequential mixed method approach to gain a better perspective on the aspects of place that contribute to an individual’s rootedness in the most rural and depopulating portions of the central Great Plains. Questionnaires were mailed in 2015 to 1,000 randomly-sampled households in ten counties of Kansas and Nebraska. Counties were selected on the most rural USDA ERS Rural-Urban Continuum and Urban-Influence Codes, ERS typology identifying population loss, and the most geographically-remote USDA Frontier and Remote Area designation. Focus groups were conducted after the mailed questionnaires in the county seats of three of counties that received the mailed survey. Correlation and contingency analyses were used to explore relationships within the closed-ended questionnaire responses for statistical significance. Open-ended responses provided depth to the closed-ended material. Results of the focus groups provided rich qualitative data that triangulated with quantitative results and offered a holistic view of the aspects of place encouraging someone to remain in a depopulating region. The elements of place encouraging rootedness were similar between the responses on the mailed questionnaire and those from the participants in the three focus groups. Rootedness was most associated with a sense of belonging. Rooted respondents also indicated that they felt good about where they live. In addition, many rooted individuals perceive themselves to be insiders in the community and view community spirit to be strong. Questionnaire results suggest that being involved with the community had a positive relationship with levels of rootedness. Rooted respondents were also more likely to perceive the visual appearance of their nearby surroundings favorably. A significant concern was the need for more vocational services within the focal study counties. A lack of sufficient trained individuals was seen as a reflection of institutional fast-tracking of students out of the area combined with a lack of support for motivating young people to apply their skills locally. Communities within the study area are not in danger of disappearing anytime soon, but their populations’ continued downward trajectory undermines their viability over the long term. Strategies like a shift in local educational approaches and inclusive activities aimed at those more likely to leave may encourage new roots to be put down or nurture roots to grow deeper, thus helping to curb outmigration.

Sweden has a long history of Lutheran Christian influences, manifested spatially by the presence of churches in the build environment. In contrast, Sweden is also described as one of the world’s most secular countries. These secular individual’s experience of these churches is not well explored in geography of religion. Therefore, this study’s aim is to investigate what shapes non-religious individuals’ place attachment to religious spaces. To reveal this, the study is based on transcriptions from a Transect Walk with 12 non-religious individuals at Maria Magdalena church in Södermalm, Stockholm. These narratives are viewed through a place attachment framework together with theories of religion, sacred space and secularization, to answer the research question: What affects non-religious young individuals’ place attachment towards a sacred place? The attachment was formed by the subjective mosaic of combinations, which revealed that churches in general are instrumental venues to obtain the goal of participating in temporary ceremonies. In turn, it was affected by the subjects’ memories, connection to cultural Christianity, lack of religious attachment and the church as a unique place. This contributes to the field by revealing what affects place attachment of non-religious individuals to sacred spaces in a Swedish context.

Cette thèse a pour objectif d’explorer l’interaction entre les différents liens d’attachement dans une relation à la marque enseigne. Elle se compose de deux parties : la première aborde la marque enseigne d’un point de vue relationnel. Elle présente l’attachement comme une facette privilégiée permettant d’appréhender la relation à la marque enseigne. La deuxième partie a pour objectif de décrire les différentes articulations entre attachement au lieu et attachement à la marque dans le cadre d’une relation à la marque enseigne. Pour cela, une triangulation méthodologique est menée à l’aide de trois techniques de recueil auprès d’un échantillon global de 55 individus : 17 entretiens semi directif, 11 introspections et 27 Test de village. Les principaux résultats de la recherche obtenus suite à une analyse selon les règles de la théorie enracinée, indiquent que dans une relation à la marque enseigne, l’attachement au lieu et l’attachement à la marque s’articulent selon deux principales configurations : la configuration de clivage et la configuration d’inclusion. La configuration de clivage présente les deux liens d’attachement comme totalement indépendants. La configuration d’inclusion présente un attachement à la marque enseigne qui est spatialement ancré. Ce dernier s’articule autour du rituel marchand, de la congruence perçue entre le lieu et la marque et d’une mémorabilité spatialement ancrée / The objective of this thesis is to explore the interaction between the different types of attachment in a service brand relationship. It is organised in two parts: the first one deals with the relational aspect of the service brand, it presents the concept of attachment as a main facet of this relationship. The second part aims to describe the different links between the service place attachment and the brand attachment in a service brand relationship. For that purpose, a methodological triangulation is conducted through the collection of 17 interviews, 11 introspections and 27 village tests. The main results obtained indicate that the interaction between service place attachment and brand attachment in a service brand relationship, is based on two major configurations: the configuration of cleavage which is characterised by an independence between place attachment and brand attachment. The configuration of inclusion indicates that brand attachment is grounded in a place attachment. This configuration revolves around three dimensions: the ritual merchant, the perceived congruency between the place and the brand and a spatially grounded memorability

This thesis examines the everyday experiences of Anglophone communities in three different regions of Quebec – the Gaspésie, Gatineau and Eastern Townships – with the aim to understand their sense of place. Specifically, the focus is on the role of different geographic contexts on everyday access to social services, particularly healthcare, and how these experiences contribute to Anglophones’ place attachment. Data collection involved semi-structured personal interviews with ten participants in each region. Comparative analysis yielded three main findings: (1) issues with accessing healthcare in English reinforces Anglophones’ minority status; (2) in spite of the challenges faced as a linguistic minority, Anglophones demonstrate a strong sense of place to their region; and (3) feelings of home, heritage, and rootedness constitute elements in Anglophones’ place attachment and contribute to their sense of place in Quebec. The study also concludes that age, mobility, and location are important variables in influencing everyday experiences in each of the three regions.

The relevance of places to people has been questioned in recent times, as the world has become increasingly globalised and people more mobile. The aim of this research was to explore the relationship between sense of place and people’s behaviour in ‘ordinary’, everyday places. This contrasts with much prior research, which has focused on ‘special’ places, such as national parks and impressive landscapes in order to investigate the components of sense of place. Most people do not live in such places, but inhabit ordinary places in (sub) urban contexts. The research questions were: How does sense of place manifest in an ordinary, everyday landscape? In what ways can social learning impact upon the dynamics of sense of place? Can a more salient sense of place affect people’s attitudes towards and behaviour within their local area? Using an action research approach, pre- and post-interviews and three workshops to create a sustainable future vision at a neighbourhood level of scale, and the town as a whole, were held with fourteen residents of East Bolton, in the North West of England. The activities were designed to facilitate interaction between the participants, so that meanings attributed to places could be shared and discussed. This approach allowed participants to see familiar places in new ways and to share perspectives. The key themes that emerged from this research were: the importance of childhood places; the impact of mobility – both physical and social mobility; the interdependence of places at various scales; and also self-efficacy and people’s ability to influence their surroundings. A key finding was that sense of place can be made more salient for people in ‘ordinary’ landscapes, particularly if people are given direct experience of their places and opportunities to share and reflect on their perceptions relating to place. Social learning, however, takes time and requires resources to create opportunities to influence the salience of sense of place. The findings point to the value of promoting social learning through engagement activities. Planners, regeneration project officers and citizen groups could utilise sense of place as an organising principle to explore place meanings and as a catalyst for stimulating local action. Participants found it more difficult to discuss sense of place at the neighbourhood level of scale than the town level of scale, partly owing to their differing conception of boundaries and lack of awareness of the neighbourhood beyond the home. This has implications for implementing the localism agenda, suggesting that local action and visioning needs to be situated within activities nested at a range of scales in order to be most effective. The drive towards localism may lead to more self-organising and activism emerging from outside of the formal planning system and becoming a force for collective place shaping. Thus, the benefits of developing a more salient sense of place may also have impacts in less formal ways, such as greater interest and involvement in neighbourhood affairs and increased capacity-building, from which community action could potentially emerge.

People’s authentic sense of place is being overshadowed by less authentic experiences referred to as placelessness. Consequently, a demand for experiential interior environments has surfaced. Experiential environmental and place attachment theories suggested that the relationships between self, others, and the environment are what encourage users in creating meaningful authentic experiences. This qualitative study explored the roles of the experiential interior architectural features in affording users of hospitality environments higher-level needs, such as meanings of place. For the case study, ten participants stayed at a hotel for two nights. Participants were given a guided list of ten facets of an experience, which was insidiously structured by both experiential environmental and place attachment theories. The participants used photographs to document each of the facets on the guided list. The photos were then used during the photo elicitation interviews, which evoked additional qualitative information. Participants identified specific interior architectural features and described them using the themes associated to place attachment theories. The findings revealed that the interior architectural features might enrich the meanings a person associates with a given place. Possibly affording users higher-level needs. As a result, if an experiential interior environment allows users to foster relationships between self, others, and the physical environment, they may experience more authentic experiences and give more meanings to a place.

abstract: This dissertation addresses empirical, applied, and theoretical issues in the place literature through an ethnographic study of the volunteer stewards in the nonprofit McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (Scottsdale, Arizona). The first phase of study explores Conservancy stewards’ phenomenological place meanings through participant observation, a photovoice protocol (N=18), and life-history interviews (N=53). Findings indicate that being a steward fosters deep, identity-based place meanings within the conservation land (the McDowell Sonoran Preserve) and City of Scottsdale. The second phase of study measures stewards’ psychometric place attachments to the Preserve and broader community using the Place Attachment Inventory (PAI) survey. New stewards’ (N=29) PAI scores—collected before attending orientation and one year after—demonstrate a rise in Preserve place attachment and place identity in the first year of service. Established stewards’ (N=275) PAI data suggests no correlation between place attachment and volunteer intensity. These findings are complemented by phase I results and suggest that stewards experience a rise in place identity after earning the identity of an environmental steward, regardless of engagement. The third phase of study experimentally combines the data from established stewards who participated in phase I and II (N=48) to test the hypothesis that those with identity-based place meanings would possess higher place identity scores. Data analysis found no significant differences in place identity scores between those with and without a Predicted High Place Identity. The outcomes of this experiment suggest construct validity issues with the widely used place attachment and place identity constructs. While it is established that volunteers arrive at an organization with a strong sense of place, this study demonstrates empirically how place attachments increase and place meanings deepen further after joining a volunteer organization. Communities and organizations can learn from the Conservancy’s practices that help stewards easily establish and perform a place-based steward identity. Finally, the experimental mixed methods findings suggest a sense of place research program that measures attachment to a place’s meanings rather than attachment to a place. This shift will allow place meaning and place attachment to be studied concurrently, advancing the sense of place construct and broader place theory. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2020