A city user that is often neglected in these fast urban transitions is the children. Even if Swedish planning offices aim to increase the focus on children, they are hindered by a lack of knowledge, leading to adult-created places not rooted in children's actual needs. Places actually important to children are rarely justified and children are forced into specific settings that are small islands in an otherwise adult-oriented world. To be able to build a child-friendly city, planners need first to understand children’s sense of place. Nonetheless, most research done on the topic is reviewing sense of place as generated between adults and their environment, neglecting sense of place as a phenomenon also between environment and child. The lack of insight into children’s sense of place and the tangible absence of justification for children’s places in urban planning highlights the need for further research. From a phenomenological critical realism approach, the aim of this study was to contribute to the theoretical discussion of sense of place from the perspective of children and to give guidance to the planning practice. Through interviews and observations with children between 3-7 years old living in two different neighbourhoods, the result implied that children develop a sense of place through aspects like physical setting, community, memories, knowledge and through meaningful functions created with fantasy. Furthermore, places important to children seem to often be places where they were allowed to experience independently without being overprotected by parents. Common to the valued places was also that they offered physical, social as well as psychological challenges. They are often part of open and flexible spaces allowing children to use their fantasy, imagination and to build their own places. The guidance to the planning practice was divided into five guiding points; Rethink, Involve & Include, Make accessible, Accept, and Create.

American flat-picking guitarist, singer and songwriter Norman Blake holds legendary status among guitar players, bluegrass, and folk musicians. The aim of this research is to analyze the interaction of sense of place in Norman Blake’s songwriting. This research will explore the techniques Blake uses to create that acute sense of place. Elements of literary criticism, cultural geography, ethnomusicology, and sense of place studies, as well as historical background information on Northern Alabama and North Georgia will be employed to show how this particular region of Southeastern Appalachia has informed Blake’s songwriting. The research questions that I aim to answer are how a sense of place has influenced Norman Blake’s songwriting, how his writing has influenced other songwriters in the field of 20th century folk music, bluegrass, Americana, and country music, and what songwriting techniques Blake has employed to create an acute sense of place.

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<p>Sense of place (SoP) at the neighbourhood scale is one phenomenon that can bring to light the forces that shape residents’ experiences of living in urban neighbourhoods, and play a role in shaping their identity. At an even smaller scale are the gathering places of everyday life, where people can come together and spend time on a regular basis. This research is about single women’s experiences of local gathering places and their neighbourhood SoP in Hamilton, Ontario, from a feminist perspective. Feminist research values the knowledge and experiences of research participants and has the goal of understanding the world in order to build a more just society. A qualitative case study was employed, with face-to-face interviews (n=15) being the primary method of data collection. Participants were single mothers and single older women living in a neighbourhood in central-east, lower city Hamilton. This thesis explores the themes resulting from the interviews, including: factors influencing neighbourhood SoP; types of gathering places; social and emotional qualities of gathering places; physical/spatial qualities of gathering places, and; the relationship between gathering places and neighbourhood sense of place. These themes highlight the importance of gathering places to neighbourhood SoP, and the potential for the perspectives and recommendations of the participants to be included in current efforts around neighbourhood development in Hamilton. The results also point to areas for further research around SoP, and next steps for Hamilton in terms of creating a safe and age-friendly city, and engaging in critical community development.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)